Mission Dolores was in fact founded and built under Serra's direction in 1776, originally under the name Misión San Francisco de Asís - giving our city its name. Serra was the principal architect of the California mission system, overseeing the building of nine missions from San Diego up to San Francisco during his lifetime, beginning in 1769. So, who was this man whom Native American activists and others have been calling out for decades as being undeserving of statuary and other honorary namings? Daly City has an elementary school named for Serra, San Mateo also has a Junipero Serra High School, and there is this hideous statue of Serra pointing a huge finger toward the coast next to I-280 in Hillsborough. In San Francisco, in addition to the now toppled statue in Golden Gate Park, we have an elementary school named for Serra, and Junipero Serra Boulevard runs from the south west part of the city southward to Daly City. After statues of Serra were toppled in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the weekend, some historians and Catholic church officials are pushing back and denying the narrative that Serra was cruel to indigenous people, attempting to argue the opposite. Father Junipero Serra, the 18th century Franciscan missionary* who is often credited with making California habitable for Europeans by converting and often enslaving native tribes, is one of multiple historic figures whose legacies are being questioned anew in recent weeks of national protest.