da's office covered surprised the observer. the la headquarters of the ku klux klan revealed 3000 clan members in la county alone, 1000 s. including the da staff, and two names on the list spoke volumes, the la chief of police and la county sheriff were both members. the messenger put it in their report on the raid the same courageous thinker would contend that negroes can rely on police and the authorities when the evidence reveals the police and authorities are members of the ku klux klan. one would think this episode would put a end to the california clan but after the trial was botched, you can read about that in chapter 5 in which all these clan members debated their attack the local naacp, they continued to operate ever since the trial. what does this have to do with housing and segregation? contrary to popular assumptions, this clan at a focus on african-americans and catholics and others and another assumption i want us to get rid of and some believe that the clan disappeared during the 30s and especially world war ii, the tamping down of the second clan. many believed that was the end of it for the clan to be spouting their own white supremacist ideology and they didn't go underground, in the war years 5, 46 for the resurgence of the clan, we call this the third clan and target is black and brown families moving into white and brown areas of the state. is the clan i want to talk about. photograph from north ridge. one of the things the plan hopes to stop is black and brown homeowners through previously white neighborhoods some of you might know that miller was a prominent attorney or later a judge and was the point person on legality unrestricted housing. many of you are familiar with the term restricting covenants that this house, this property may never be sold. .. miller was naacp person on and he would be instrumental in fighting against restrictive housing peer he would be one of the lead attorneys up and out the state for thousands -- dozens and dozens of cases where black folks moved into previously white neighborhoods. he also defends some of the most high-profile cases in the nation including the case of mcdaniel, the actress who won the oscar for gone with the wind. so he would be, he is also part of the story. . oh day short was a refrigeration engineer who lived and worked in los angeles 25 years by 1945. like many black angelenos, here's frustrating by the housing shortage. his father of young children i do see his daughter and his wife, helen and they were of the desired neighborhoods by restrictive housing. the estimated about 80% of socal was tied up in restrictive housing. so that your had a lucky break and he got a job the plant from 1949. many of you have heard of kaiser permanente clinic. in montana, the black workers in his shipbuilding yard in northern california. but this plant was in montana east of l.a. and fontana promoted itself as a place of jim crow restriction so his job as an engineer at this., he felt like he won the lottery. it was a good job and the plan was the first facility for the products on one site. it's an international benchmark. the job was a boom for african-americans and they labored in lower pain, lower status jobs. 1945 in december, oh day short and his family moved to a plot of land and fontana. the property was south of baseline street there was an area where no family could ever live. as soon as they moved into their house, they were visited by two white sheriff's and told him he is out of bounds. he moved to the black neighborhood on the other side of the road. december 3, the real estate agent who sold short the lot full-time, the vigilante committee had a meeting on your case last night, they are a rough bunch to deal with. if i were you, i get my family off this property. oh day short was well aware the vigilante for clan members and he prepared for trouble did three things. first, he called his attorney, who was a law partner. second, he contacted the fbi entered he contacted members of the flock press. california eagle and another black neighborhood. they have recounted the threats he received from the sheriff about the vigilante. ten days later, it burst into flames. the fire that engulfed the property begin with the explosion and neighbors electrically. the family managed to escape the house but not before they were all severely burned. next-door neighbors statement later to the press the neighbor said they didn't know was a black family because they assumed they were right. the little girl 15 minutes after she was admitted in the boy died the next morning as to their mother, having. here is some coverage of the press. as soon as the fire subsided, reports circulated, white neighbors agreed the responsibility of the fire light with short. mr. short was lighting a lamp and it exploded. black press wasn't having it. the california eagle suspected foul play and sent reporters to the scene of the crime, naacp and the l.a. chapter also investigated the crime. as they began to investigate the crime, it became apparent that it was almost impossible for a lantern to cross that kind of explosion. here's a picture of the eagle office because the walls of the house were knocked to the ground so the lamp or lantern theory, they should doubt on this theory. now it's a long investigation process, many months of investigation and i don't have time to do to help all of it but in the aftermath of the murder, there is an elaborate cover-up of evidence that would have led to criminal conviction. the corner in his investigation refused to admit evidence that was set by vigilantes. the lantern itself so intact i supposedly blew up was not entered into the investigation and the district attorney, it became clear in the midst of this cover-up but there was also an organized resistance to the cover-up and the efforts to seek justice for the family were also ongoing. 1946, a leader of the los angeles socialist workers party wrote and published this pamphlet. she distributed the pamphlet happened on the state across the country and she spoke about the short murder across the country. there was a forward by the sister of helen, his sister-in-law. in addition to the workers party, the labor movement also pressured the governor, district attorney san bernardino to investigate the murders. since it is a refrigeration engineer, he'd also been a member of the labor movement and cio in particular put pressure on state officials to investigate the murder. state attorney general robert the murder in the client, he promised an investigation but nothing came of it much to the disappointment of the organized resistance. an editorial and deliberative summed it up. when any person propel with entire certainty, the shorts were a victim of jim crow. they're finding a home in los angeles jim crow was a violator of community tradition and built his house on the lot he purchased, the deputy sheriffs and set them selves toward a plan to deprive american citizens of his constitutional right. all the shorts are dead, only jim crow is alive. the story doesn't quite and fair because jimmy in 1946 stepped up efforts to investigate the client. you have penny here on the far right with two members, and in 1946 the klan d up its efforts to terrorize black homeowners and this caused him to continue his investigation of the klan. that year in 1946 the klan burn crosses on the homes of many black homeowners across southern california. it also burned crosses in front of the jewish fraternity at usc because the fraternity had supported an end -- [inaudible] and in the spring of 1946 he began calling clan members into his office. but again the results were disheartening to those seeking justice for the short spirit he found no evidence that so-called vigilante activity to be directed at the effort in american community inso montanar against mr. short personally. now, many people wondered if his response to the murders was linked to his bid for governor that year. he went up againstng earl warren and was defeated. but what kinney did do was with the help of an l.a. superior court judge is to revoke the charter of the ku klux klan thereby making it unlawful for the organization to hold meetings in theng state. she knew this was largely symbolic because in the 1950s, client activities continued. and you have a picture from 1962 -- 52, the timelines in this photo was new racial intimidation fears and you can read the caption where the reporter is examining the letters kkk that were on the sidewalk in front of presumably a black family, and that the hope of a negro teacher in the vicinity was recently bombed. that teacher was william bailey lived in south-central l.a. and client attacks continued into the '50s. now, we also know that brown v. board of education in 1954 would inspire white supremacists to push back against integration with new inspiration. so. while the client may have morphed into a different kind of organization in the 1960s, it had not disappeared. so i'm just going to close here. the threat that segregationists saw him in was many layered. they were educated men with good jobs. they could purchase property. they could vote they could inhabit public spaces and institutions. lord miller, charlotta bascom of the california eagle and los angeles district mounted against housing discrimination and the klan was formidable but they never acted alone. joined by the naacp, the cio, socialist workers party, the communist party and activists such as van marshall, california's movement against restrictive housing went broader and deeper individuals across the state few of them remembered because the color line and lifted her neighbors d into neighbors that we know to be watched by the kkk. short and hisig family, and others, sounded the alarm against the client or white supremacist violence of the 1940s found expression in montana after the brand the board decision. the backlash against school desegregation of the revival of the klan became so successful that by 1965 president lyndon johnson ordered an investigation to clamp down on the client activity. in 1963 in african-american captain in the air force bought a houseap in san bernardino only to watch it destroyed arsonists before he and his family could movee in. little had changed in the 17 year since the 7 years since the murders of the shorts. the golden state have long published, punished african-americans who dare to challengepu segregation. sum paid with their lives. thank you so much for listening. >> thank you so much. thank you, lynn. i would invite anybody to put questions they might have in the q&a box, and maybe all people are starting to do that i could get in my questions. >> absolutely. >> i read a quote by you in an interview when you talkingng abt this and you said at school you learned about citizens in the south and you might learn about chicago but you don't hear stories about los angeles or about the west. why do you think that is and you think that is changing?rk >> that's a great question. of course my recollection are dated and i think schoolteachers in the west and in california are doing so much to teach children about resistance and civil rights movement in the west. i get to the question in a minute. i want to say first and foremost i know schoolteachers in the west are teaching about the west i personally didn't learn about the civil rights movement in the west in california are you in my hometown. i grew up in, pasadena and a lot of what i learned about, i learned from acquaintances and teachers but not the approved curriculum. i learned from teachers like thomas, my eighth grade teacher who taught us about black history in a program those kind of extracurricular. .. robinson who worked at my high school told stories about the robinson family so there's a lot of things that have changed in public school but things that >> out of the story that it's not involved with teaching, necessary, it's about the textbook. the chapter on civil rights, it's -- theee south, montgomery, alabama, maybe d.c., maybe chicago. maybe, right? so that also has to change. and, you know, with the work of these scholars thato i mentioned at the beginning of my talk, i think that it's changing. but we also have are to start seeing the civil rights movement and whitete supremacy as nationl phenomena, right? and the resistance against white supremacy and something that's national. >> i have so many questions, i'm going to -- i just wanted to remind. you, we'll look at the chat box as well, if you can put them in the q and a, we'll be able to get through them in order. the first oneet from liz thomas, how did brown v. board of education restrict housing for people of color, that connection there? >> okay. so very quickly at the end there when q i was reading from my bo, the backlash against brown was phenomenal across the country. right in that unanimous decision thatmo segregation request was t equal, is so we know that it didn't necessarily get implemented in the ways that folks might have liked, we know that the backlash against brown was phenomenal. and it's actually something we're till living with -- still living with today. hose of you that are interested might want to look at nancy mclean's book democracy in chains whereoo he charts the was that think tanks and scholars and politicians who were part of the backlash against brown, who were against brown v. board and fighting integration, the way they so deceived the modern conservative movement. so what you're asking is the links between brown and restrictive housing. so what i was suggesting is that it's not always called the -- [inaudible] the part of that broad conservative back hash against segregation -- against e integration, against brown v. board, right, and that violence that was experienced in 1963, right, when you bought a house in san bernardino only to see it goou up in flames, that's stilla part of the backlash against the civil rights brown and backlash against the civil rights movement and their successes, right? somo the connection is just that black homeowners and brown homeowners were targets of violence and intimidation and jim crow policies if not laws after brown, obviously. yeah. >> there's a couple about your book, i'm actually going to jump to this one because it's a little bit related. could the rise of the second klan california be tied to the great migration? >> oh, yes, thank you. i can't believe i did the that whole talk and didn't say the term great migration. thank you so much. absolutely. absolutely, i mean, really what i was talking about, right, it's the third klan, it's that 1940s klan that i was talking about -- [audio difficulty] and that is directly linked to influx of black migrants and the great migration. absolutely. for those of you who read isabel wilkerson, you know about the history of of the great migration. the great migration transformed california, right? it was astounding how many african-americans came from the south, especially from louisiana and from texas. you know e.v. rollins is a part of that great migration. so, yes, absolutely. and that is also a part of the klan's anxiety. thank you so much for asking that, right in the klan is targeting those homeowners because those are the folks moving into the all-white neighborhoods, right? some of these black families have been there the for generations, but many of them are migrants, right? not o.j. short, right in he'd already lived in los angeles for 25 the years, so he was a recent migrant but, yes, absolutely, this white supremacist activity that we see is absolutely linked to the great migration. so thank you. >> uh-huh. just quickly from one person, they wanted to know about o.j. short. he actually passed away -- >> yeah. oh, my gosh. wow. talk about leaving off an important sentence in my talk there. sorry. yes, ian left that sentence out. thank you. yes. a few days after his family i died, he was told that the hospital and his friends and sporters were trying -- supporters were trying to not tell him. he was in the hospital with severe burns, and they were trying not to tell him that his hifamily had died. but the the d.a -- the v.a. staff went in to question him which now would have certainly been illegal under his condition, and he said i am not in any shape to answer any of your questions, can and hay informed him that his two children and his wife had died, and then he soon passed away. i'm to sorry i left that out. many -- in my excitement to get to the end and finish on time, i left out that important information. yes, it was really tragic. >> i mean, i think to be honest we could talk for goaling to two talk for two hours and not cover anything. based on your research, what is the relationship between private property and white supremacist, racismsm and domestic terrorism? we've got two questions there. there's a relationship between, i guess, the destruction of private property, which is what the klan was, one of their tactics. >> yeah. so one of the things, i mean, there's so many angles there. one of the things i think is so important about the property that we were talking about tonight s is that it was particularlys threatening to white supremacists that african-american men were owning property, right? if you think about that first klan, right, one of the things that the first klan targeted were newly-freed black menwomen who were voting and who were free and trying to carve out a piece of land for themselves, all right? so if you know anything about that first klan, you know that they often targeted black entrepreneurs. so if you know anything about i'd a da b. wells -- can ida b. wells and the b moss brothers wo with sewned -- owned a successful grocery store and the klan murdered them, and that was one of the things that the inspired her to leave the south and come to chicago. so in some ways this is not new, the fact that the klan targeted in california black property owners, it actually is a continuity there between the first and the second and third klan, right? we just don't associate that with california. so that's one thing i wanted to say about c property, is it hadt particular resonance that black men -- because, of course, it's associated with masculinity, right in and if you think about the gendered roles of the '50s and the '40s, right, for a man a home is his castle, and black men are now buying a home, you know, buying property, building a home, that was to claim masculinity for yourself for black men, right? and that was also threatening. you know, one of the things the khan was very concerned about was -- klanou was very
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American Libraries
TV News
Understanding 9/11
