was known for his strong stand on civil rights. He gained worldwide headlines offering his home to Willie Mays after it was reported that a Forest Hill realtor had refused to sell to Mays. Christopher also lobbied and succeeded in opening mental health and alcohol treatment centers under city funding. Christopher presided over the redevelopment of major portions of city and private lands, labeled slums, some not without controversy; Embarcadero Center and Golden Gateway, displacing the old wholesale produce market from the filled land southeast of Telegraph Hill to the Alemany location where it remains, Japantown and the Fillmore urban renewal that displaced the African-American and the remnants of the Jewish Community for concrete high rises, the new Hall of Justice and the opening of the Embarcadero Freeway, which blocked the Embarcadero and Ferry Building from the city, spawning the first Freeway Revolt. In Christopher's second term, the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities held hearings in the City Hall supervisor's chambers. A large group of students and active citizens were fire-hosed down the marble steps inside City Hall rotunda by the San Francisco Police Department when they protested their exclusion from admission to committee hearings. Christopher later told the Federal Government they were no longer welcome in city buildings, but he sided with the committee and spoke for the propaganda newsreel-style film made by the committee about the event titled, Operation Abolition, that blamed Communists for the so-called City Hall riot of May 13, 1960. Christopher was criticized for endorsing the film while saying that "at least 90% of the students were not organized by the Communists." Other elections Christopher's various bids for higher office failed. In 1958, Christopher was defeated in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate by Governor Goodwin Knight. In 1962, when Richard Nixon ran for governor, Christopher ran for lieutenant governor, losing to incumbent Democrat Glenn M. Anderson. He lost the June 8, 1966, Republican primary for Governor of California to motion picture and television actor (and future conservative icon) Ronald Reagan, who won with 77 percent of the vote. Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice points out that a Drew Pearson column that highlighted a 1940 arrest of Christopher for buying and selling underpriced milk, a story fed to Pearson by the staff of incumbent governor Pat Brown, and Christopher's underwhelming response to that column contributed to the loss. References Further reading Oral history interview on California politics,