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Reconstruction and Reclamation: the Erased African American Experience in Santa Monica’S History | Alison Rose Jefferson | Page 2 of 155 Reconstruction and Reclamation The Erased African American Experience in Santa Monica’s History ALISON ROSE JEFFERSON M.H.C. | PH.D. 1 Cover: (Top row, left to right) The Rev. James A. Stout and family, 1919, Cristyne Lawson Collection; Verna and Arthur Lewis at the Santa Monica Beach, 1924, Shades of L.A. Photo Collection/Los Angeles Public Library; South Santa Monica Beaches, 1939, UCLA Department of Geography, Thomas Air Photo Archives, Spence Air Photo Collection; Protest at Sears Department Store, Santa Monica, ca. 1947–48, Santa Monica History Museum, Bill Beebe Collection, 3.2.8069; Burning a shotgun home in the Belmar area, 1953, Courtesy of Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, donated to the Library from City Collections. (Bottom row, left to right) Phillips Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Ocean Park, 1908, Santa Monica History Museum, Virginia Tegner Spurgin Collection, 36.2.5866; Cristyne Lawson at the Bay Street Beach, 1953, Cristyne Lawson Collection; Vernon Brunson and friend in the neighborhood north of Santa Monica High School, ca. 1930, Santa Monica History Museum Collection, 36.2.2294. ________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2020 Alison Rose Jefferson Portions of this essay were first published by Dr. Jefferson in her book Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Use of quotes in excess of fair use (2,500 words) only by permission of the author. www.alisonrosejefferson.com ________________________________________________________________ This essay was developed for the Belmar History + Art project, supported by the City of Santa Monica, to inform the project’s history and sculptural artwork exhibition, educational program, and website. Belmar History + Art commemorates and celebrates the African American neighborhoods of South Santa Monica and their contributions to the city’s history and cultural heritage. Belmar History + Art was inspired in part by a mandate of the California Coastal Commission to “integrate the principles of environmental justice, equality, and social equity.” www.santamonica.gov/arts/belmar Reconstruction and Reclamation: The Erased African American Experience in Santa Monica’s History | Alison Rose Jefferson | Page 2 of 155 Contents Preface 4 About the Author 7 Acknowledgments 11 California Dreaming 15 Early History of Santa Monica 17 African American Pioneers 25 1920s: Challenges and Opportunities 70 1930s and 1940s: Forces for Change 89 1950s and 1960s: Expansion and Displacement 116 Epilogue and Postscript 140 Santa Monica Population Characteristics 145 Bibliography 146 Reconstruction and Reclamation: The Erased African American Experience in Santa Monica’s History | Alison Rose Jefferson | Page 3 of 155 Preface In March 2019, the California Coastal Commission held a meeting in Los Angeles to approve its landmark environmental justice policy. I had been invited to help set the tone of the meeting with a presentation on the African American experience in Southern California. During the meeting, I also suggested that additional permit conditions be added to the City of Santa Monica’s construction plans for the Historic Belmar Park (the multipurpose sports field at Fourth Street and Pico Boulevard) and the bike path and walkway expansion project between the Santa Monica Pier and Bay Street. These plans would not only ensure the recognition of the historical coastal-zone African American neighborhoods, but would also improve recognition of the historical African American beach culture space at Bay Street. The commissioners thought well of my suggestion as action to set in motion the kinds of social and environmental justice strategies they wanted to implement as part of their new mandate to help ensure equitable coastal access for marginalized communities. In late July 2019, the City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs invited me to become the historian for city’s new applied history project mandated by the California Coastal Commission to fulfill a permit condition for both construction plans. The historical narrative that follows, with its eighty-three illustrations, is an outgrowth of my decades-long study of the African American experience in California and my participation in the development of the Belmar History + Art (BH+A) project. The Santa Monica chapter from my book Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era and this essay underpin and inform the BH+A project, a multifaceted program commemorating the African Americans who lived in neighborhoods of South Santa Monica and their contributions to the city’s history and culture. Explore the other project programming at the BH+A website, www.santamonica.gov/arts/belmar. BH+A is an outgrowth of my interest to continually develop opportunities to make this history more visible though different media for people’s enjoyment as they gain knowledge and inspiration that can empower them now and in the future. Its programming effort is one of the first to move forward in fulfilling the California Coastal Commission’s mandate to incorporate environmental justice, equality, and social equity into its programs and operations for the benefit of all Californians. It is also the first applied history and art project of this type undertaken by the City of Santa Monica and Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, commissioned by the City of Santa Monica Percent for Art Program with additional funding support from the Santa Monica Department of Public Works. From the project’s inception, I participated in outreach and engagement activities to help the Santa Monica community learn about the project and to gain additional knowledge from African American community members. Over the course of a year, I made site visits, conducted interviews, and gathered photographs and other materials, all adding to the research resources I have been collecting over the decades. Additionally, I consulted with developers of the project’s permanent Reconstruction and Reclamation: The Erased African American Experience in Santa Monica’s History | Alison Rose Jefferson | Page 4 of 155 artwork, k-12 curriculum, high school students’ artwork development, future ongoing educational programs, and information modes such as postcards, handouts, tours, other communication modes, and a website. Individually and collectively, this programming educates, amplifies, and encourages the public’s understanding of the historical African American experience in the bay city as part of our collective and diverse California cultural heritage. Gathered over the years and throughout my participation in the project, stories emerged of representative individuals and their community, accomplishments, and freedom struggle, and the public and private spaces they claimed as their own. Many of these stories are highlighted in this essay, the outdoor exhibition, and in the other outcomes of the BH+A project. The representative stories I have reconstructed for the project components through oral history, archival and personal collections, and site visit research recast the significance, meaning, and place of the African American experience in Santa Monica’s urban landscape and heritage conservation. In this essay I reconstruct and reclaim the erased history of the African American residents, business owners, and visitors who contributed to Santa Monica’s development and cultural life from the late 1800s into the mid-twentieth-century decades. Important African American-owned businesses were established in the Belmar Triangle, located at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium site today (Fourth Street and Pico Boulevard), and other South Santa Monica neighborhoods north of the high school and in Ocean Park. The first Black spiritual and institutional space, Phillips Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church, opened at Fourth and Bay Streets in Ocean Park, just a few blocks south of the new Historic Belmar Park. The establishments in this area provided services and accommodations for African Americans from Santa Monica and elsewhere. They were particularly important for African Americans and other marginalized groups when they came to enjoy the Pacific Ocean only a few blocks away. The impacts of displacement due to waves of urban renewal infrastructure projects and anti-Black discriminatory housing practices, such as actions of economic sabotage by White supremacists to diminish Black wealth-building and discriminatory loan policies, often referred to as redlining (see page 115, note 144) also vividly come to life. This essay and BH+A’s other project programming encompass an important symbolic action of equity and inclusiveness for commemorative, social, and environmental justice. This action recognizes that African Americans and other marginalized communities have contributed to Santa Monica’s colorful history and that they have a right to their own historical and cultural sites, along with access to clean air, clean water, and enjoyment of America’s natural and other resources. Telling the histories of Santa Monica’s erased African American neighborhoods opens up the complexity of the American story and enlivens the past for more diverse constituencies who will learn about, be inspired by, visit, and use the city’s Historic Belmar Park, the Bay Street Beach, and other sites near or at the California coast. At the conclusion of the project’s development, the nation and the world are grappling simultaneously with
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