His Grandfather Was Canceled. Now He's Making Sure People Remember His Grandmother Was a Hero.

In September 2019, as the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department officially unveiled the new name for what’s now Presidio Wall Playground, the event went off with little fanfare. A modest delegation of representatives from community groups were on hand as a new sign was revealed by workers in orange reflective vests. They applauded politely and were soon on their way. No one made any remarks. The ceremony took less than 10 minutes. A century earlier, when the park opened in honor of 12-term congressman Julius Kahn, it was planned as a major event, with bands, children’s games, and all kinds of festivities. Perhaps ominously, that grand opening was rained out.

Nearly 100 years later, the park was again the focus of the city’s attention, swept up in a larger debate about the ways in which cities honor certain historical figures— especially those whose legacies are being rethought “as part of a nationwide call to stop glorifying slave traders, antisemites, racists, and imperialists,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That effort included Congressman Kahn, the park’s namesake, who was the city’s first Jewish representative in Washington in 1899, but who was also responsible for helping pass an extension of the Chinese Expulsion Act, which prevented nearly all Chinese immigrants from gaining citizenship and many basic rights.

In 2018, a resolution was brought to the city’s board of supervisors to strip Kahn’s name from the park. Then-supervisor Norman Yee said, “Julius Kahn’s anti-Asian policies during the early 1900s did not espouse the values that San Francisco stands for today.” 

Julius “Sandy” Kahn III, a member of Oakland Durant Rockridge № 188 and the grandson of Congressman Kahn, disagrees vehemently with Yee. For many people, the movement to grapple with the history of racism in America has presented some tricky dilemmas and emotionally thorny issues, as once-revered figures have come under new scrutiny. Especially for Masons, this has led to a conundrum. For 250 years, the fraternity has pointed with pride to its association with the Founding Fathers and other civic leaders like Kahn (a member of St. Cecile № 568 in New York)—in many cases, the very figures being wrenched from their historic pedestals. For Kahn, it was personal, too. 

But rather than engage in what appeared to be an unwinnable fight, Kahn, who lives at the Acacia Creek Retirement Community in Union City, chose another tack. He remains proud of his connection to one of San Francisco’s most influential politicians, not to mention one of the most important Jewish families on the West Coast. But he is more apt to use his grandfather’s memory as a launching point for a conversation about early San Francisco history than for an impassioned defense of his grandfather’s character. 

That, says the younger Kahn, who worked as an estate-planning attorney for nearly 60 years in the Bay Area, is also by design—and a reflection of his half-century membership in the fraternity. Rather than remain at loggerheads over an emotionally charged issue, Masonry compels its members to find shared values around which to work. In doing so, Kahn invokes one of the most profound lessons of Masonry—and something Kahn believes is missing from contemporary political argument. That is summarized in the Masonic degrees, in which the tool of the compass is said to represent the ability to “circumscribe our desires and keep our passions within due bounds.” In doing so, one demonstrates restraint and control, the basis for morality and wisdom.