![]() And the people were waiting for a good show, and I believe they got a good show. HASSAN: His presentation was electrifying. The stylish atmosphere in the court was such as to make one wonder if the judge would pour tea during the afternoon recess.ĬHANG: This crowd had shown up not only to see the Hollywood stars, but also to take in the legendary NAACP lawyer Loren Miller, who argued their case. Legal historian Amina Hassan says, that day, you could see wealthy Black Angelenos dressed to the nines.ĪMINA HASSAN: Hattie McDaniel and hundreds of sympathizers appeared in court in all their finery. But then, on December 5, 1945, the parties entered a courtroom. It has all the minutes of the restrictive covenants, the redlining, and the meeting to start changing the restrictions.ĬHANG: Those meetings to change these restrictions, they went on for years. HOUSTON: That's the book of the minutes that, you know, granddad was the president of the group. The meeting of the West Adams.ĬHANG: The pages are all brown with age. You know, before it was called Sugar Hill, it was the West Adams Heights District.ĬHANG: Ivan Houston still has this old notebook that belonged to the association. HOUSTON: They created the organization called the West Adams Heights Protective Association. Hattie McDaniel, Norman Houston and dozens of other Black families fought back with their own Black homeowners association. So they sued their Black neighbors for violating these racially restrictive covenants. MEHTA: But as more African Americans, moved into Sugar Hill, one white homeowners association didn't like what was happening. So he kept pushing as far as he could push - but legally. And he felt he was as equal as anybody, and nothing should hold him back. IVAN HOUSTON: He recognized things that were unfair. He knew very well at the time that he was defying a covenant attached to the house he bought in 1938. But some white homeowners willingly violated these covenants to sell to Black buyers, in part because those buyers were willing to pay more since there was less property available to them.ĬHANG: The first known black person to buy a home in Sugar Hill was Norman O. MEHTA: And courts helped enforce these rules. In 1940, 80% of the properties in Los Angeles had these restrictions attached to them. These covenants were basically agreements written into property deeds that made homeowners promise never to sell to African Americans or other minority groups. And it was everywhere.ĬHANG: Everywhere in the U.S., including in Sugar Hill. And he would show how the covenants were worded - no Blacks, no Jews, just blatant hate. R NICKERSON: When my father would talk about covenants - as a child, I worked with him in his real estate business - and covenants were alive and thriving, you know. Ra Nickerson remembers her dad explaining this to her when she was really young. MEHTA: This thriving community in Sugar Hill existed despite a powerful tool that white residents were using to keep neighborhoods white - the racially restrictive covenant. On screen, she may have played a housekeeper or an enslaved person, but here in Sugar Hill, she hosted extravagant soirees in her sprawling mansion where people like Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters would perform. By the 1940s, Sugar Hill was home to some of the most prominent figures of Black Los Angeles - doctors, entrepreneurs, oil barons, even Hollywood stars like "Gone With the Wind's" Hattie McDaniel. And we'd go up and down the streets selling lemonades.ĬHANG: Berkeley Square was part of a larger neighborhood called Sugar Hill, which was named after a wealthy Black section in Harlem. And we sell lemonade at the east end of Berkeley Square. There were all kinds of, like, craftsman houses - five, six, seven bedrooms. They lived in a charming little pocket of central Los Angeles called Berkeley Square. Van was just 3 years old, his sister Ra was 4 when their family moved here almost 70 years ago. MEHTA: Their house is now where the Santa Monica Freeway is. VAN NICKERSON: What she's pointing to, right there where that sign says this quarter next 3 exit, lift it up, our house is right about there. R NICKERSON: Yeah, that's where Berkeley Square was. JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: This is what Ra (ph) and Van Nickerson's (ph) childhood home sounds like today. The story of Sugar Hill brings to life many of these ideas we just talked about - segregation, racist covenants and who has the right to live where. We're going to go back in time now and visit a neighborhood in Los Angeles that no longer exists.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |