Aug 31, 2008

THEN AND NOW: Segregation in Palo Alto

By Matt Bowling / Daily News Columnist

Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part series on the history of housing discrimination in Palo Alto.



After suffering through the aggressive racism of the Jim Crow South, millions of black left for the Rust Belt cities of the north and the supposedly tolerant climate of California in the three decades following World War II. But there they would find a less confrontational form of racism that would often prove every bit as detrimental as the burning crosses and separate drinking fountains of the South.

Perhaps most insidious would be the housing discrimination they would face in their new surroundings. The actions taken by white property owners and realtors, with a nod from the Federal Housing Administration, would eventually relegate most blacks to live in separate and vastly unequal neighborhoods.

While there have certainly been many instances of racial brotherhood and tolerance in Palo Alto, anyone looking back into the city's history must come to terms with the role that racism and bigotry played in the unfair treatment of black and other minorities.

Here, housing discrimination has led to the creation of "two Americas" right in our midst.

While, largely poor and minority East Palo Alto suffers from crime, unemployment and a troubled school system, just across the freeway, Palo Alto thrives after decades of excluding blacks.

In the early days of the city there were just a few black citizens who called Palo Alto home. But as their numbers grew and more Asians moved into town as well, attitudes in Palo Alto grew less tolerant. In 1920, the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution calling for a "segregated district for the Oriental and colored people of the city."

The motion was supported by Palo Alto Times publisher George F. Morell, as well as the Native Sons of the Golden West, the American Legion and the Palo Alto Carpenters Union.

The Palo Alto Times ran editorials in support of the idea. But Henry Dodson, the president of the Colored Citizens Club of Palo Alto responded with dignity and class, stating publically that "We believe the best people of this city are in unison with the great majority of the people of this state who dissent from such an undemocratic doctrine."

Eventually, the plan died and although racial zones would be suggested again in the 1940s, such segregation was never legislated in Palo Alto. Still, blacks would have to fight less vocal racism in the future. While few Palo Altans demonstrated outward hatred toward minorities or had an inclination to throw white sheets over their heads, there were not many residents who were ready to live next door to a person of color.

The postwar economic boom would bring an influx of southern blacks to the Bay Area. In Palo Alto, their numbers would rise from 239 in 1940 to 467 seven years later, with most blacks crowding into a few scattered neighborhoods in town. The most prominent black neighborhood was on Ramona Street near the spiritual home of the community, the AME Zion Church. But there were also concentrations of black residents on Fife Street near downtown and in the poorly kept areas south of Colorado Road on old El Capitan Road.

But as more blacks attempted to move into the city and black residents tried to move out of its ghetto, they met widespread resistance. For instance, the majority of subdivisions established in the city between 1925 and the 1950 included the following clause, "No person not wholly of the white Caucasian race shall use or occupy such property unless such person or persons are employed as servants of the occupants ..." Other covenants were of a more informal variety.

When black trucker William Bailey and his family of sox moved into the Palo Alto Gardens complex in then-mostly white East Palo Alto, residents actually tried raising funds to "buy out" Jones to keep it segregated.

And of course, hundreds of other such stories never made it to the local press and most blacks did not even attempt to move across the area's well-known color lines.



To read the entire story go to www.paloaltohistory.com/africanamericans.html. For more Palo Alto history, go to www.paloaltohistory.com. Then and Now writer Matt Bowling can be reached at mtb324@gmail.com.