How a racist housing policy caused a bitter California brawl
Nationally, we simply noticed the sixtieth anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. In California, there wasn’t a peep concerning the sixtieth anniversary of a historic civil rights triumph on this state.
That’s comprehensible. There are in all probability few individuals nonetheless round who know a lot concerning the Rumford Honest Housing Act, which produced arguably the most important, bitterest brawl ever in California’s Capitol.
Trying again, it’s nearly inconceivable what the struggle was about. It was over whether or not it ought to be legally permissible — by no means thoughts morally proper — for owners and landlords to proceed discriminating due to pores and skin colour within the sale and rental of housing.
Spurred by Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, the Democratic-controlled Legislature voted after a lot anguish to ban racial discrimination in housing. The general public backlash was swift. Californians voted by almost 2 to 1 the subsequent yr to legalize discrimination once more. However the state and U.S. Supreme Courts finally dominated that the voters’ motion was unconstitutional.
“The temper in California was as anti-equality — by legislative edict and native ordinances — as you possibly can think about,” says former Meeting Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a legendary Black politician, recalling the mid-Sixties.
“The Rumford Act was thought-about a no-no.”
Moods throughout America have been ugly in 1963.
Birmingham, Ala., Police Chief Bull Connor turned canine and hearth hoses on civil rights marchers. Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood within the schoolhouse door vowing to dam integration. Civil rights chief Medgar Evers was shot to demise in Mississippi. Racists bombed a Birmingham church, killing 4 little ladies.
In Sacramento, Gov. Brown daringly proposed laws to finish racial discrimination in housing. “No man ought to be disadvantaged of the precise of buying a house of his personal due to the colour of his pores and skin,” the governor declared.
These have been combating phrases within the mid-Sixties.
Not like the Jim Crow South, California didn’t have formally segregated colleges or separate consuming fountains for white and Black individuals. However de facto housing segregation was frequent. Folks of colour have been barred by native covenants from many white neighborhoods.
The housing invoice was carried by — and unofficially named after —Assemblyman Byron Rumford, D-Berkeley, the primary Black legislator elected from Northern California. Then, there have been solely three Black lawmakers out of 120. As we speak there are 12.
In a scene that couldn’t occur at the moment due to tighter safety — and hasn’t occurred since — scores of civil rights demonstrators occupied the Capitol’s second-floor rotunda between the 2 legislative chambers for weeks. They slept on the tile ground at evening and sang “We Shall Overcome” throughout the day — ticking off many lawmakers but additionally making use of stress.
Senate chief Hugh Burns, a conservative Democrat from Fresno, tried to stop a vote on the invoice because the Legislature approached necessary adjournment on the ultimate evening of its annual session. However Meeting Speaker Jesse “Massive Daddy” Unruh of Inglewood, a civil rights champion, threatened to kill all Senate payments pending in his home except Burns freed Rumford’s measure.
A compromise model narrowly handed the Senate actually on the eleventh hour, then breezed by means of the Meeting seven minutes earlier than the midnight adjournment.
However first Unruh, a Texas sharecropper’s son who understood white racism, rose on the Meeting ground and cautioned colleagues concerning the political risks of getting too far forward of the citizenry.
He was instantly proved right. The California Actual Property Affiliation launched a repeal effort, Proposition 14, that turned probably the most emotional and vitriolic initiative campaigns in state historical past. The end result was by no means doubtful.
The Los Angeles Occasions endorsed the repeal, editorializing that housing discrimination was basically a “fundamental property proper.”
Pat Brown referred to as Proposition 14 sponsors “shock troops of bigotry.” However his forceful advocacy of the Rumford Act contributed considerably to the governor’s reelection defeat in 1966. Newcomer Ronald Reagan trounced him in a landslide.
Rumford additionally misplaced a state Senate race.
Reagan attracted voters by vowing to wipe the Rumford Act off the books. However as soon as in workplace he actually by no means tried. Give him credit score for that a lot.
The Rumford Act finally advanced into at the moment’s Honest Employment and Housing Act, which some Black legislators contend isn’t being adequately enforced — significantly legal guidelines towards office and rental discrimination.
“The state company is actually understaffed and overburdened,” asserts Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles). “A lot of it has been gutted.”
“California proclaims to be the vanguard of progressive values and social justice, but we’ve not invested in our civil rights infrastructure,” Smallwood-Cuevas says.
Sure. However the bitter wrestle over the Rumford Act reminds us of how far we’ve are available 60 years.
George Skelton is a Los Angeles Occasions columnist.
