River Oaks Campaign, 1951–1952

“As California’s civil rights struggles moved beyond legalized segregation,” according to the historian, Mark Brilliant, “the state was at the forefront of fair housing litigation and legislation” (Brilliant 2010, 5). The NAACP West Coast Region, based in San Francisco, was often at the center of this fight, litigating several cases in the 1940s and 1950s that yielded important victories against segregation in both public and private housing. Loren Miller, based in Los Angeles, served as the NAACP’s expert on housing cases; he collaborated with Thurgood Marshall to prepare briefs and oral arguments for the Supreme Court’s 1948 ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer, which held that restrictive covenants that prohibited the sale of property to non-whites violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under Miller’s leadership, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations “brought an avalanche of complaints about housing restrictions to the courts” (Hudson 2020, 200–201). At the grassroots level, many NAACP chapters organized campaigns pressuring city authorities and real estate boards to adopt nondiscrimination policies.

To provide relief to struggling families and to address the city’s acute housing needs, Sacramento city officials, with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the United States Housing Authority (USHA), constructed four public housing projects by 1944: New Helvetia, Dos Rios, Parker Homes, and Defense Dormitories at Grant Union High School. The PWA and the USHA issued directives that guaranteed African Americans a certain number of public housing units and construction jobs. Both required local municipalities to follow a “neighborhood composition guideline,” which guaranteed that the process of tenant selection in the earliest projects did not depart from local residential patterns. As a result, local housing authorities often limited access to units for non-whites and insisted on strict segregation within each project (Hirsch 2000, 161). Sacramento City Housing Authority officials did not deviate from this pattern. It not only denied Black families their fair share of housing units but also confined them to all-Black areas in developments like New Helvetia; even so, only 16 or 310 units there had Black occupants, and Dos Rios had no Black residents. The proportion of units allocated to African Americans did not reflect their housing needs. (Sacramento City Council Minutes, January 3, 1952; “City Will Probe” 1952). Given this context, civil rights organizations believed that targeting discrimination in public housing first made the most practical sense.

The construction of the River Oaks housing project created an opportunity for civil rights organizations to confront the Sacramento City and County Housing Authority, which had jurisdiction over the city’s public housing. In December 1951, the Sacramento Chapter of Democratic Action and the Sacramento NAACP met with commissioners from the Housing Authority and implored them to change their segregation policy. In response, Albert H. Becker, executive director of the Sacramento City and County Housing Authority, announced that housing units in Dos Rios “will be made available to minority race families” for the first time. Becker also pledged to increase the “quota” of units designated for minority groups at New Helvetia and River Oaks. He revealed that it was “true” that the housing authority enforced a policy of racial segregation, but he contended that “there has been no discrimination against making housing available to these groups” (“Dos Rios Homes” 1951). When pressed by civil rights groups to put these new policies in writing, Becker refused to do so. Despite being threatened with legal action, he remained defiant: “There isn’t anything you can do in court … Legally you people haven’t a leg to stand on” (Mayer 1953).

Becker’s refusal to guarantee changes to existing policies convinced civil rights activists to step up their pressure campaign. On December 29, 1951, a multiracial coalition of civic and religious organizations met and formed the Committee against Segregation in Public Housing. Committee members explored various strategies, including litigation. Nathaniel Colley, head of the committee’s legal counsel, believed that litigation could be an effective tool but “costly” if the case went to trial with one or more appeals to higher courts. Therefore, Colley recommended legal action only as a “last resort” (Mayer 1953, 30) Ultimately, the committee focused its efforts on the new River Oaks project, hoping to block any attempt from the housing authority to impose the same racial segregation policy there that already existed in New Helvetia. “We have got to start [such action] somewhere,” said Colley, “It is obvious that once Negroes are moved into lily-white areas in one housing project, the whole policy of racial segregation has been broken down” (“Housing Heads Surrender” 1952).

Overturning that policy, however, would prove difficult. When the committee presented a resolution opposing segregation to the City Council, it refused to vote on it and instead forwarded it to the city manager, Bartley Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh told the committee that while he favored integration, he exercised little influence over the Housing Authority. it did something “absolutely illegal,” said Cavanaugh, the City Council “stayed out of the housing business.” (Mayer 1953, 28) As the Committee against Segregation in Public Housing quickly surmised, the city council and housing authority had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Both bodies remained beholden to the local real estate establishment. Where the City Council was concerned, the adoption of a resolution opposing segregation in public housing had broader implications. If it opposed segregation in public housing, how could it then condone segregation in private housing?

Once it became clear to the Committee against Segregation in Public Housing that the Housing Authority remained committed to maintaining separate Black and White units at River Oaks, it decided to pursue legal action against city officials. Wary of bad publicity, the Housing Authority chose to reevaluate its segregation policy (Mayer 1953). On January 31, 1951, it changed course, declaring that henceforth “Negro families will be assigned, as accommodations become available, to units in any part of the project regardless of the race of families occupying adjoining or nearby apartments.” It further declared that thirty-two of the sixty-four Black families scheduled to move into River Oaks would be asked to “defer occupancy until a later date” to ensure that “strict integration” could take place (“Integration Policy” 1952). The Committee against Segregation, however, rejected the commissioners’ plan and accused them of trying to buy more time while they continued to segregate current and new Black residents, creating what it described as a “Black Belt” within the project. Colley explained to committee members that if occupation was to be deferred, it would become nearly impossible to present a case to a judge that on its surface appeared to be a “satisfactory arrangement.”

On February 1, 1952, Colley filed suit in the Sacramento County Superior Court on behalf of three Black River Oaks tenants: Willie Franklin, Marion Reynolds, and Norma Johnson. According to the suit, they had been assigned to special buildings in the one area restricted to Black occupants. The suit also alleged that “defendants [city officials] threaten to deny Plaintiffs admission to said project unless Plaintiffs consent to be segregated therein solely because of their race or color.” This would violate the “Charter of the United Nations, the Constitution of the United States, Section 1978 of the United States Code, the Constitution and public policy of the State of California and the National Housing Act of 1937 and 1949.” That same day, the Superior Court judge signed an order preventing the Sacramento Housing Authority from moving any Black families into segregated units until the case for integration could be presented (“Groups Sue to Prevent” 1952).

In the following month, the Housing Authority, under continued pressure from activists and the courts, again announced plans to “make a good faith effort to carry out a policy of racial integration.” It agreed to give the sixteen Black families the option of moving from segregated units to ninety units still under construction that would include White families. Although some committee members praised the plan, others raised questions, particularly with respect to the provision that gave the Housing Authority discretion over the “administrative details” of the transfer. The agency’s history of reneging on previous agreements inspired little confidence among many committee members (Mayer 1953, 33). As it turned out, the Housing Authority did everything possible to discourage Black families from moving, such as requiring them to pay all moving-related expenses, denying them access to moving trucks, and, in some instances, refusing to issue them keys to new units. Even though all the families were relocated by late April, they were still relegated to “segregated knots.” Instead of moving Black families next to whites, the Housing Authority arranged for them to be placed in units next to Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, and Japanese Americans. When Canson and West accused Becker of chicanery, he told them that “Mexicans” were, in fact, “Caucasians.” One frustrated tenant, Elmo Williams, summed up the collective feeling of the committee when he said, “This isn’t what I thought of as integration” (Mayer 1953, 40). By April, the Committee against Segregation in Public Housing disbanded, with many of its constituents uncertain about whether it had been successful. Even though the Housing Authority publicly proclaimed its commitment to integration, its efforts to enforce this policy can be described as token at best.

Despite the Housing Authority’s intransigence, the committee’s goal of dismantling segregation in public housing was ultimately achieved. In the case of Banks v. Housing Authority of the City and County of San Francisco, the Regional Legal Redress Committee represented Mattie Banks, a single Black mother, who was denied a unit in an all-white housing development. NAACP attorneys accused the city of maintaining a racial quota system in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. On September 1, 1952, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Melvyn I. Cronin declared the neighborhood guideline policy “illegal and void” and an “unlawful violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the laws and general public policy of the State of California and the City and County of San Francisco” (Broussard 1993, 224). He argued that, in light of the 1948 Shelley decision, the Housing Authority’s policy of excluding Black tenants from certain housing units “should not apply to a public housing project, financed by public funds and supervised by a public agency.” The Constitution, Cronin stated, applied to the individual, not to a specific race or group; therefore, the “neighborhood pattern” policy of selecting tenants was unconstitutional. The District Court of Appeals upheld the Superior Court’s ruling in 1953, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. This decision gave the Regional Legal Redress Committee its first major victory and the “first victory on the appellate level in the United States on the question of public housing” (Brilliant 2010, 143). As Miller later wrote, the decision “was taken to mean that the separate-but-equal rule had no application to public housing” (Broussard 1993, 225). This victory helped establish the reputation of the NAACP West Coast Region as the leading civil rights organization in the state.

The River Oaks campaign underscored the determination of local government—via the Sacramento City and County Housing Authority—to maintain the city’s color line in public housing, and, by extension, all housing. Yet the River Oaks, Banks, and other housing cases provided momentum to the fair housing movement in Sacramento and gave the NAACP the opportunity to hone its legal strategy for the next phase in the struggle for fair housing: eliminating racial discrimination in federally assisted private housing.

The Fair Housing Ordinance, 1954

After the Banks decision, the Sacramento NAACP turned its full attention to fighting discrimination in private housing. One of its strategies used the controversial issue of redevelopment to pressure the Sacramento City Council to adopt a citywide fair housing ordinance. Since the early 1900s, Sacramento downtown business elites had complained of deteriorating conditions in the West End and urged that the area’s aesthetics be improved and its economic vitality restored. In 1954, the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency introduced its redevelopment plan—the Capitol Mall Project—to the public. Many West End residents and community groups opposed the project because it called for the demolition of their homes and businesses. For these people, the West End was not the slum that it was being portrayed as by government officials and the press. It was home to a thriving Japanese American community still reeling from the impact of wartime incarceration. It was also home to many working-class African American families who—confronted by the reality of racial discrimination in housing—had few options available to them. If the West End was demolished, where else in the city could they live?

Representatives from the African American, Asian American, and Latino American communities urged the City Council to adopt measures that dealt fairly with West End residents. Sensing an opportunity, the NAACP decided to pressure the city to adopt a citywide ordinance banning discrimination in private housing. On September 16, 1954, attorney Douglas R. Greer, chair of the Special Committee on Urban Redevelopment for the Sacramento NAACP, presented the City Council with a proposed ordinance calling for “the prevention of discrimination in ownership, use and occupancy of real estate in the City of Sacramento” (“Law Banning Realty Racial Laws” 1954). It guaranteed all people living in the city of Sacramento “equal opportunity to purchase, own, occupy, lease and sub-lease real property … without discrimination or segregation on account of race, color, creed, or national origin” (NAACP, Proposed City, 1954). City Manager Cavanaugh told the Council he saw nothing “objectionable” in the proposal and seemed to offer support for its adoption. The City Council, however, quickly moved to postpone any consideration of the ordinance until October 7, 1954.

Ultimately, the City Council refused to implement a citywide fair housing ordinance. Instead, it passed a nonbinding resolution that only recommended that every redevelopment plan forwarded to it for approval contain “adequate provisions precluding direct or indirect discrimination … or segregation” in deeds, leases, and contracts (“N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Redevelopment” 1954). Despite being disappointed by the council’s decision, the NAACP pledged its support for the Capitol Mall Project. “We’ve been for redevelopment as a principle all along,” Colley told the Bee, “and have held back endorsement of this particular program because we wanted to see [if] certain safeguards were provided. The resolution adopted last night provides those safeguards.” Still, Colley made it clear to the City Council that the NAACP’s citywide ordinance proposal was “still on the memorandum list” and was “much more desirable” (“City Bans Discrimination” 1954; “N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Redevelopment” 1954).

Ming v. Horgan, 1954–1958

Although the City Council did not pass a fair housing ordinance, the NAACP continued its campaign against racial discrimination in federally assisted private housing. As early as 1952, the Regional Legal Redress Committee made its services available to any NAACP branch that targeted racial segregation in private housing with FHA/VA commitments (NAACP, Minutes of Meeting, 1952). The committee initially looked toward the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles for its test cases before settling on one in Sacramento County in which African Americans had been routinely turned away from new housing developments. On May 10, 1954, the legal committee of Colley, Miller, and Williams filed suit on behalf of Oliver A. Ming, a Black World War II veteran and McClellan Field employee, and nine other African Americans against several of the largest real estate and construction firms operating in the county (see figure 3.1).

According to the suit, on January 15, 1954, Ming had attempted to purchase a home in McClellan Meadows, a subdivision located in the North Highlands neighborhood. Even though Ming met all qualifications, the NAACP charged that the real estate broker, Milton G. Horgan, refused his application solely on account of his race. Other defendants named in the suit included the Sacramento Real Estate Board (SREB), McBride Realty Company, Hackes & Hurst Real Estate, and more than a dozen individuals. Collectively, they had built or sold virtually all the units in Sacramento County since 1944. The suit accused the defendants of having conspired to refuse to sell homes to African Americans. It claimed that the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the FHA, was passed by Congress for the purpose of providing affordable housing to citizens of the United States “without distinction as to race, color or creed.” The suit charged defendants of ignoring new FHA guidelines that had gone into effect on February 15, 1950, which denied mortgage insurance to builders who failed to pledge not to apply race-restrictive covenants to their developments. Such actions, according to the plaintiff, violated both the National Housing Act of 1934 and California state law. The plaintiff asked the court to nullify the so-called oral agreement among the defendants and prohibit them from refusing to sell homes to Blacks “except upon terms and conditions applicable alike to all citizens, regardless of race, creed, or color” (“Suit Charges Race Bias in Area Housing” 1954).

Coming in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, many felt that the Ming case marked the next logical step forward for the civil rights movement. Speaking at a press conference, Franklin Williams announced that “the two greatest discriminatory practices remaining” in California were “housing and employment bias” (“NAACP Head Hits Housing, Hiring ‘Evil’ ” 1955).

On June 23, 1958, Judge Oakley handed down a decision in favor of Oliver Ming. He concurred with the plaintiff’s argument that the National Housing Act of 1934 sought to provide adequate housing for all Americans who met certain financial requirements, regardless of race. Because every law passed by Congress contained an inherent antidiscrimination clause, Oakley declared, the FHA could not “play favorites as to race, color, or creed” and had an obligation to extend the benefits of such legislation to all qualified citizens. Although developers and real estate agencies reserved the right to discriminate on the basis of race when carrying out exclusively private business, the fact that they operated under the auspices of the federal government when receiving mortgage loan guarantees obligated them to accord all applicants the same rights.

Judge Oakley’s 1958 ruling in the Ming case had far-reaching implications not only in the state of California but also throughout the nation. It marked the first successful legal challenge to racial discrimination in private housing built with FHA/VA commitments and the first court-ordered injunction requiring builders and developers to cease their practice of not selling homes to African Americans (“Negroes on Coast Win Housing Case” 1958; “Rules out Biased Home Deals” 1958). Most importantly, Ming opened the door to legislation in California prohibiting racial discrimination in all publicly assisted housing. The 1958 election of Democrat Pat Brown to the governorship and the corresponding ascendance of liberal politics in the state during the late 1950s and early 1960s led to a legislature that was more receptive to civil rights (Flamming 2000).

After more than a decade of legislative battles and pressure from civil rights organizations, Governor Brown finally signed the long sought-after California Fair Employment Practice Act on April 16, 1959, which banned “discrimination or abridgement on account of race, religious creed, color, national origin, or ancestry” in employment. The law would be enforced by the newly created Fair Employment Practice Commission (FEPC). That same year, Governor Brown also signed into law A.B. 890, known as the Hawkins Act, which forbade racial discrimination in “publicly assisted” housing in California. This legislation, however, had severe limitations: it only applied to builders who used federal or state mortgage insurance and not to homeowners, who could still refuse to sell or lease their property to anyone based on race (Brilliant 2010).

Oak Park

Established in 1887, Oak Park is Sacramento’s oldest suburb. It offered working-class families an opportunity to own their home while living close to downtown Sacramento. It was like a city within a city, with its own thriving business district along Broadway and 35th Street. Few African American families resided in the district before World War II. However, the Second Great Migration, the redevelopment of the West End in downtown Sacramento, and housing discrimination in other neighborhoods that made them off-limits to African Americans brought many Black families to the area. Oak Park was one of the few areas where Blacks could easily purchase or rent property.

The steady flow of Black families into Oak Park in the 1950s and 1960s set off “white flight”: the exodus of white residents and, in some cases, white-owned businesses, from an area becoming increasingly Black. By the late 1960s, Oak Park, which had one of the highest concentrations of African Americans in the city, had become Sacramento’s epicenter of the “urban crisis”—a popular term used by the mainstream media and government to describe the plight of American cities struggling under the burdens of crime, unemployment, dilapidated housing, and so-called riots. Despite these signs of divestment and decline, Oak Park became the center of Black culture and activism. When the Black Panther Party established a chapter in Sacramento in 1968, it operated its headquarters on 35th Street.

Unfortunately, Oak Park never recovered from the economic fallout caused by the departure of homeowners and businesses. As the economic crisis of the 1970s worsened, so did Oak Park’s fortunes. Despite the efforts of community activists and organizations like the Oak Park Project Area Committee to revitalize the area, the steering by the local real estate industry of African Americans and low-income residents into Oak Park and the concurrent practice of redlining on the part of banks and other financial institutions made such efforts nearly impossible. By 1980, public housing projects and a post office building had replaced the stretch of businesses that once stood along 35th Street.

The twenty-year period between 1980 and 2000 brought little substantial change to the area. This period could very well be described as Oak Park’s nadir, as it housed high concentrations of poor, uneducated, unemployed, or underemployed residents seemingly untouched by the gains of the civil rights struggle. Parts of Oak Park have experienced a resurgence since about 2005, but this has come largely at the expense of its most vulnerable residents. Gentrification—the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste—has certainly brought much-needed investment to the area. Restaurants and retail stories have returned to Oak Park’s business district—now dubbed as the “Broadway Triangle.” However, as property values and rents rise, many more low-income Oak Park residents will likely be pushed out.

Del Paso Heights

Del Paso Heights (DPH) is one of the oldest residential districts in the region north of the American River. Located in the former Rancho Del Paso, DPH joined several new subdivisions that developed north of the American River in the 1940s and 1950s. Housing discrimination in other neighborhoods, combined with the availability of cheap land, attracted many African Americans to “the Heights.” As in Oak Park, the Second Great Migration, along with the demolition of the West End, opened the floodgates for Blacks to move into DPH. As an unincorporated and largely rural district, DPH suffered from inadequate services and infrastructure before it was annexed by the city in 1959. Although annexation brought much-needed resources to the community, it did not bring dramatic improvements to the lives of residents. Making matters worse, DPH lacked a central business district that could have provided steady employment for area residents. Freeway construction in the 1960s bypassed business districts on Marysville, Rio Linda, and Del Paso Boulevards, further isolating DPH and creating unsustainable conditions for businesses to thrive. Few major shopping centers and a surplus of small liquor stores created a food desert for many residents. Redevelopment efforts in the 1970s, like those in Oak Park, failed to generate economic growth and reduce unemployment among residents. Though DPH is still a struggling community, it has experienced some improvement since about 2000. New housing developments such as Del Paso Nuevo and Renaissance provide moderate-income families the opportunity to purchase homes in the district. Community-based organizations such as the Roberts Family Development Center and the Mutual Assistance Network have worked tirelessly for decades to provide services to DPH families and children.

North Highlands

The North Highlands neighborhood was developed in response to the establishment of McClellan Air Force Base in 1936. That base, along with other defense-related industries, drew thousands of migrants to Sacramento during and after World War II. Eager to capitalize on this opportunity, local builders began to develop subdivisions near the base. Even though many African American servicemen worked at McClellan, the neighborhoods that made up North Highlands remained virtually all-white as they continued to exclude Black families. This was especially frustrating for Black employees at the base, forcing them to live in far-away areas like Del Paso Heights.

Despite having a high population density, North Highlands lacked adequate amenities and services primarily because of a lack of sufficient tax revenue: the area’s largest employer, McClellan Air Force Base, was tax exempt because it was a military installation. Consequently, North Highlands was unable to maintain its parks, recreation programs, and fire services. Another factor that contributed to the area’s decline was redlining.

A major blow to North Highlands came in 1995 when the federal government announced the closure of McClellan Air Force Base, along with 350 other bases throughout the nation. When the base officially shut down in 2001, it resulted in a loss of more than 11,000 people and over $500 million in payroll. Making matters worse, the Great Recession of 2008 had an especially devastating impact on the community. North Highlands, along with several other distressed neighborhoods in Sacramento with a significant Black concentration, experienced a disproportionate number of home foreclosures. Many homes in North Highlands were abandoned and remained vacant for years.

Meadowview

Meadowview was one of the many postwar suburbs in Sacramento County developed during the 1950s, providing affordable single-family homes to middle-class Sacramentans. It was located between Freeport Boulevard and 24th Street and from Florin Road to an area south of Meadowview. Up until the 1960s, South Sacramento remained overwhelmingly white. However, the influx of Black families moving into the suburb touched off a wave of white flight. Many whites did not welcome Black newcomers to their neighborhoods and believed in the myth that integrated neighborhoods lowered property values, created slums, and increased crime. The combination of Black in-migration and the problems created by overdevelopment and speculation only hastened the departure of white residents from the area.

White flight and the influx of low-income residents into Meadowview crippled the district’s economic base. By 1990, many businesses operating in the area had left and been replaced by smaller businesses that employed fewer people and generated little revenue. Despite its problems, many Meadowview residents proved resilient throughout this period of transition and fought hard to bring needed resources to the area and to enhance its image. Meadowview has always had a proud history of civic engagement. After years of having almost no political representation at the municipal level, Meadowview acquired its own council seat in 1991 when the City Council redistricted the city. The following year, Sam Pannell was elected to represent the district. Pannell and, later, his wife Bonnie Pannell represented the district for more than twenty years.

Valley Hi

To the east of Meadowview lies the community of Valley Hi. Located west of Highway 99 and south of Mack Road, Valley Hi developed slowly. By 1975, it had around three thousand residents. Beginning in the 1980s, however, white flight gradually changed the face of the community, but like much of South Sacramento, it remained mostly white and middle-class. More than half of all homes were owner-occupied. Both Kaiser and Methodist Hospitals served the area and employed hundreds of people, Cosumnes River College enrolled more than ten thousand students, and the neighborhood featured several quality schools and recreational programs.

However, the narrative that predominated in the local media cast neighborhoods like Valley Hi and Meadowview as Sacramento’s version of South Central Los Angeles. The Rodney King uprising in 1992 only heightened fear and anxiety. Much of the media coverage of Valley Hi during this period tended to present a simplistic view of a neighborhood in crisis, beset by high rates of crime, unemployment, and despair. Although Valley Hi did experience these problems, it also had a small yet thriving Black middle class. As with Meadowview, many African Americans were drawn to the suburb because it offered relatively affordable housing and decent amenities. Valley Hi, like many South Sacramento neighborhoods, took a serious hit during the Great Recession. Many Black residents took out subprime loans during the height of the housing boom only to see their monthly payments skyrocket beyond what they could afford to pay. In 2011, the Bee described Valley Hi as one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, “converting scores of owners to tenants.” This crisis had a devastating impact on Black homeownership and resulted in a major loss of wealth for African American families.

Fruitridge/Stockton

The Fruitridge-Stockton Boulevard district is located between 14th Street to the north and 47th Street to the south, and between Franklin Boulevard to the west and Stockton Boulevard to the east. It comprises several subdivisions built mostly between 1940 and 1960. This district developed during Sacramento’s postwar housing boom and is one of several neighborhoods that expanded the southern boundaries of the Sacramento metropolitan area. A section of this area, known as the “Fruitridge Pocket,” is unincorporated.

Originally, much of the area was farmland used primarily to grow wheat. With the demand for more housing, however, Sacramento area real estate developers such as John H. McMahon and Paul B. Ford developed what became known as the Fruitridge Shopping Center in the late 1950s. This popular shopping center served a growing population in South Sacramento. Although the FHA helped subsidize the expansion of the suburbs, it also contributed to residential segregation, requiring real estate developers to use race-restrictive covenants to keep out all African Americans. Taking its cue from the real estate industry, the FHA considered any neighborhood with African Americans as high risk and refused to provide mortgage insurance in these areas. Thus, many builders like McMahon and Ford made sure to keep their developments all-white. As a result, the Fruitridge-Stockton Boulevard district remained overwhelmingly white from 1950 to 1970.

White flight during the 1970s opened up homes in this area to Blacks. During the 1980s, large numbers of Southeast Asians and Latinos also moved into the district. Not coincidentally, as whites fled parts of the district, the neighborhood entered a period of decline. Many of the homes vacated by white families were rented to disadvantaged residents desperate for better housing options. However, a major turning point came in the 1980s with the introduction of crack cocaine to the neighborhood. The impact of this crisis cannot be underestimated. It led to rising addiction rates and unleashed a cycle of violence and turmoil that affects the neighborhood to this very day. The so-called War on Drugs upended the lives of many African American men and contributed to an increase in single-parent households, unemployment, and poverty. Making matters more complicated is the fact that the Fruitridge Pocket is unincorporated and has suffered from inadequate services for years.

Arden Arcade

Arden-Arcade is a census-designated place in Sacramento County northeast of downtown Sacramento. Its boundaries include Auburn Boulevard and Arcade Creek to the north, the American River (primarily) to the south, Ethan Way to the west, and Fair Oaks Boulevard to the east. Covering nearly nineteen square miles, it is a collection of dozens of neighborhoods with starkly different socioeconomic makeup. Some neighborhoods like Arden Oaks and Arden Park Vista, Arden Park Estates, and Arden Hills Country Estates feature million-dollar homes and some of the most exclusive real estate in the Sacramento region, whereas others include a disproportionately high number of apartment buildings relative to other parts of the county.

The collection of neighborhoods that became known as Arden-Arcade had its origins during Sacramento’s housing boom of the late 1940s. By 1960, Arden-Arcade had thousands of new single-family homes and bustling new shopping centers. Given Sacramento’s racially segregated housing market, Arden-Arcade and most of its surrounding districts began their existence as lily-white suburbs. Since about 2010, Arden-Arcade has seen a rapid rise in residents who are living below the poverty line. Many immigrants and other residents—especially African Americans—who were priced out of other neighborhoods due to Sacramento’s ongoing housing crisis have been attracted to Arden Arcade because of its sheer volume of apartment units and one of the lowest rental rates in the area.

The killing of Stephon Clark in 2018 reinforced the nexus between residential segregation, poverty, crime, and policing in Sacramento County. Clark’s neighborhood, Meadowview, had once been an all-white suburb that experienced an influx of African Americans in the late 1960s. Unlike some of the city’s core neighborhoods, it had no race covenants barring African Americans. White flight and the influx of low-income residents into Meadowview crippled the district’s economic base. According to the Sacramento News and Review, “That shift … is evidence of how a century of racist development policymaking yielded the environment that drives Sacramento policing to be at its twitchiest and most fearful in places like Meadowview where crime is relatively high and opportunity is relatively low” (Pyke 2018). Being born and raised under these circumstances significantly heightened the chances of Stephon Clark encountering law enforcement compared to the average white twenty-two-year-old in Curtis Park or McKinley Park.

As the fate of Stephon A. Clark reminds us, residential segregation has real consequences for African Americans in Sacramento. Sociologist Jesus Hernandez’s research on residential segregation in Sacramento reveals that neighborhoods where African Americans and other non-whites are concentrated today experience the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, uninsured residents, and victims of predatory lending—these are the same neighborhoods where the BCLC has concentrated its efforts to combat high Black infant mortality (Hernandez 2009, 291–313). Indeed, in 2022 far too many poor and working-class people of color in the city are still trapped in the same historically redlined communities that deny homeowners the advantage of accruing equity and building wealth. Reckoning with the history of residential segregation and its continuing legacy will be absolutely critical to informing any discussion around remedies or reparations for victims of institutionalized racism in housing.

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• Horne, Gerald. 1997. Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. New York: Da Capo Press.
• “Housing Bill Clears Committee.” 1963. Sacramento Observer, March 28.
• “Housing Bill Goes to the Assembly Floor.” 1963. Sacramento Bee, March 28.
• “Housing Heads Surrender on Racial Issue.” 1952. Sacramento Bee, April 1.
• Hudson, Lynn M. 2020. West of Jim Crow: The Fight against California’s Color Line. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• “Integration Policy Is Set in Sacramento Housing Projects.” 1952. Sacramento Bee, January 31.
• “Law Banning Realty Racial Laws Is Asked.” 1954. Sacramento Bee, September 17.
• Lee, K. W., and L. Lee, L. 1973. “Del Paso Heights: A City Apart.” Sacramento Union.
• Littlewood, S. 1960. “Tour Stresses Dilemmas of Minority Housing.” Sacramento Bee, December 18.
• Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Mayer, William. 1953. “Sacramento’s Housing Fight.” The Crisis, January.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I, Records, BANC MSS 78/180 c. 1952. Minutes of Meeting of Legal Committee, Western Region, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I, Records, BANC MSS 78/180 c. 1954. Constance Baker Motley to Franklin H. Williams. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I, Records, BANC MSS 78/180 c. 1954. Freedom’s Frontier: A Statement of the N.A.A.C.P. West Coast Region Committee. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I, Records, BANC MSS 78/180 c. 1954. Proposed City Ordinance for the Prevention of Discrimination in Ownership, Use, and Occupancy of Real Estate in the City of Sacramento. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• “N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Redevelopment as Council Acts.” 1954. Sacramento City Council Meeting Minutes, October 28.
• “NAACP Head Hits Housing, Hiring ‘Evil.’ ” 1955. Los Angeles Sentinel, March 24.
• NAACP West Coast Region. 1965. Report from Region I. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People West Coast Region I Papers, 1945–1977. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.”
• “N.A.A.C.P. West Coast Regional Reorganization Conference” 1951, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Region I, Records, BANC MSS 78/180 c, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
• “Negroes on Coast Win Housing Case.” 1958. New York Times, June 29.
• “Oliver Ming Sues Real Estate Men for $5000.” 1954. Sacramento Outlook, May 21.
• Pyke, Alan. 2018. “Mapping Racism.” Sacramento News and Review, April 5. https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content/mapping-racism/26077289/.
• “Race Equality Body Stages Capitol Sit-In.” 1963. Sacramento Bee, May 29.
• “Rules out Biased Home Deals.” 1958. Chicago Defender, July 5.
• “Rumford Act’s Aim Is Clear: To Block Discrimination.” 1963. Sacramento Bee, December 23.
• “Salvaging the Good.” 1964. Sacramento Observer, November 12.
• Somerville, John A. 1949. Man of Color: An Autobiography. A Factual Report on the Status of the American Negro Today. Los Angeles: L. L. Morrison.
• “S.S.C. Prof Says Segregation in City Increases.” 1961. Sacramento Bee, May 22.
• “State Fair Housing Bill Is Passed.” 1963. Sacramento Observer, June 21.
• “Suit Charges Race Bias in Area Housing.” 1954. Sacramento Bee, May 10.