Q: As a college woman with an educational and intelligence far above the national average, can you, as a so-called enlightened person, justify your racial beliefs?
A: “Yes, I can.”
Q: How?
A: “By books I’ve read, people I’ve talked to, things I read in newspapers.”
Q: What books? Where were the people from? What things in what newspapers?
A: “I’d rather not say.”
-A Los Angeles Sentinel interview with an unnamed white Valley woman who is pro-segregation, 1962.
While the San Fernando Valley was assuming prominence as a middle-class white haven in the 1950s and 1960s, locals started noting a curious pattern. When white families would express an interest in moving to the Valley, they would reportedly be shown a number of neighborhoods and homes. And when families of color, namely Black families, would demonstrate an interest in the Valley, they would be shown…nothing. Or shuttled over to very specific neighborhoods and told to look no further. But, to their credit, the Valley put forward a very strategic and community-driven effort to battle housing discrimination against Black families.
In 1958, residents of the Valley founded the Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley (FHC/SFV) to advocate civil rights across property rentals and purchases1. They had good reason to organize. While some new, white Valley residents were enjoying modern homes with fancy new air conditioners, other Black newcomers couldn’t even attend a showing.
To their credit, the Valley put forward a very strategic and community-driven effort to battle housing discrimination towards Black families.
Ida Kinney, who in 2006 was deemed the oldest Black person in the Valley at 101 years old, attested to this history. She told the Los Angeles Daily News that she grew up in Santa Monica with her family before moving to Van Nuys. Years later, she moved again:
In 1954, she moved to a foothill pocket of Pacoima near what is now San Fernando High School. She was afraid a white developer wouldn’t knowingly sell to a black person, so she got a white friend to front as the buyer. Today, Kinney and her grandson and great-granddaughter are still the only black family on the block.
Back then, though, white real estate agents were notorious for only showing black clients properties in Pacoima and Lake View Terrace.2
Kinney’s instinct was correct and would be further bolstered by the experiences of Black families after her. A newsletter from FHC/SFV dated November 1963 outlines an experiment devised by members specifically to pinpoint racist practices. After a white family demonstrated interest in a Valley home, a “Negro couple” was discouraged from viewing the same home by the same real estate agent. After that, the members took their plan a step further:
“The two families then confronted the agent together. As a result, the Negro couple signed a contract to purchase the home and now await the result of an application for financing. If the purchase is completed, it will be the first sale to a Negro family of a new tract home in the Valley, outside of the Eichler homes.”3
What’s significant about this scenario is that housing discrimination was already illegal in California: the Rumford Fair Housing Act4, outlawing specifically what the FHC/SFV documented, had been passed two months earlier in 1963. But that’s exactly what motivated the members to test the legislation on the ground. The law wasn’t really being enforced.
Journalist Stanley G. Robertson, who would later go on to be an editor at Ebony magazine and the first Black Vice-President of both a major TV network and a motion picture company5, registered this growing racial tension in the Valley. In 1962, he interviewed an unnamed San Fernando Valley mother and wife (he offers her anonymity) who is adamantly pro-segregation. In an introduction to his Q&A, he speaks directly to a readership who wouldn’t associate such views with a pretty white woman of her standing:
“Her features were not the stereotyped lines of ‘Red Neck’ or ‘Poor White Trash.’ She was quite attractive with hazel-toned eyes, dark hair, and finely chiseled facial lines. At a glance, looking at her tasteful dress and accompanying poise, one would immediately categorize her as the ‘junior league type.’
The suburban housewife, thirtyish with two or three children, a husband with an executive job in the city and a college degree from one of the second best women’s colleges stacked away somewhere among yearbooks, prom announcements, and football programs.
Talking to her, I discovered that she was all of three, except that her husband’s job wasn’t as good as I thought it might be and she had two children. She was forced to work to maintain the standard of living that the family desired.”6
Her physical description and family constellation evoke the staged photographs and home testimonials used to sell single-family homes in the San Fernando Valley. The wife and mother pictured doting on her children and speaking about the proximity of shopping, church, and “good” schools is exactly who Robertson was trying to capture. But without the pretty pictures of new kitchens, swank furniture, smiling kids, and warm husbands, you’re just reading a bunch of deeply racist ideas from a white woman who went to Smith College—or wherever.
He speaks directly to a readership who wouldn’t associate such views with a pretty white woman of her standing.
The bulk of Robertson’s exchange attempts to capture how such an “educated” person could be so racist. He doesn’t seem to really learn anything, but he gets some incredible quotes.
On why the races should remain separate:
“I know it sounds snobbish and I don’t consider myself a snob, but I firmly believe that culturally, intellectually, and morally, the Negro People and the White People are vastly different. For them to mingle and live side by side, would, I’m convinced, bring the Caucasian Race down to the level of the Negro and, in the end, cause our society to decay.”
On having Black friends:
“In the college I went to, there were a few Negro girls on campus but I didn’t know them very well. I wouldn’t work in an office with one and certainly not have any in my home. If those people are successful in moving into our neighborhood, we’re selling.”
On the real reason she doesn’t want live near Black people:
“Because people will learn that all people are just alike…No, I don’t mean that. I mean that when people are thrown into close proximity to one another, they tend to develop personal relationships which lead to marriage.”
And lastly, on how she knows that Black people are inferior to her:
“If he were not an inferior person, do you think that he would have been a slave? Do you think he would have endured all the second-class status he has all throughout our history? Would he live as he lives today in many places—slum areas, decrepit buildings? Would his children be ragged as many are? Would he be unemployed to a great extent as many are? No, he wouldn’t be if he were not inferior.”
In an enduring tactic in racist white lady scripts, she cites concerns for her white children and her faith as the two pillars of her discrimination.
These are the politics and beliefs that the FHC/SFV was up against in their fair housing initiatives. And there was major pushback through the 1960s.
The year after the Rumford Fair Housing Act was passed, it was promptly repealed by Proposition 14 in 19647. Proposition 14 was, not surprisingly, sponsored by the California Real Estate Association (CREA) and the legislation was known as the CREA Amendment. Their goals seem to be profits over racism, as they just wanted to sell as much property as possible to racist white people rather than lose money doing the right thing—a common story.
In an enduring tactic in racist white lady scripts, she cites concerns for her white children and her faith as the two pillars of her discrimination.
What’s also common: CREA’s efforts to explicitly support housing discrimination was framed as a “rights” issue for property owners. Circulated petitions at the time presented the Rumford Fair Housing Act as eliminating citizens’ rights—to be racist.
Newsletters from the FHC/SFV indicate that they were preparing to challenge CREA through workshops, mock debates, and “speakers kits” (resource material) all available at local schools and open to members and friends. Real grassroots stuff. The strategy was to give neighbors enough information to change hearts and minds in their suburban living rooms and across backyard fences. But there was nothing demure or polite about these efforts; FHC/SFV is very clear about the monumental racism they were up against.
In a newsletter informing members about two meetings “to defeat the CREA Anti-Fair Housing Initiative,” co-chairmans declare, “We have a tough fight ahead of us. Now is the time to prepare for it.”8
Next week: more racists.
The Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley still exists and is operating today.
Greenberg, Brad A. “Legacy in the Valley.” Los Angeles Daily News, 2 Feb. 2006, https://www.dailynews.com/2006/02/02/legacy-in-the-valley/. Accessed 28 May 2025.
“Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley.” 19 Nov. 1963. The Huntington Library. San Marino, California.
The Rumford Fair Housing Act was notably passed by William Byron Rumford, the first African American elected to state office in California. He focused his political career on raising the minimum wage, fair housing practices, and reducing unemployment. Rumford was the California State Assemblyman for the 17th district from 1949 to 1967.
“STANLEY G. ROBERTSON, A FORERUNNER IN HOLLYWOOD, PASSES.” Los Angeles Sentinel , 11 Dec. 2011, https://lasentinel.net/stanley-g-robertson-a-forerunner-in-hollywood-passes.html. Accessed 28 May 2025.
Robertson, Stanley G. “The Cultured, Articulate Voice of Racial Hatred.” Los Angeles Sentinel, Aug 9, 1962; Los Angeles Times pg. A10.
“The Rumford Fair Housing Act.” Historical Research Center | CSU Bakersfield, hrc.csub.edu/. Accessed 28 May 2025.
“San Fernando Valley Committee Against the CREA Housing Initiative.” April. 1964. The Huntington Library. San Marino, California.