Black Lives Didn’t Matter in Old CV

Race relations in America dipped historically low this year. Several killings of blacks by police followed by revenge shootings of police sparked riots and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, shining a spotlight on still simmering racial prejudice. Here we are, 150 years after the abolition of slavery, 50 years after the civil rights movement and in the second term of our first black president, and the wounds suffered in these racial struggles still fester. In the interest of examining CV’s entire history, warts and all, let’s looks at some of our low points in CV’s very limited black history.

Certainly there were unrecorded incidents before, but 1918 is the first recorded white versus black conflict in our valley. Perry Whiting (Whiting Woods) sent a trusted employee to his estate to oversee his property. That man, John Allen, was black, and because of that was both resented and taken advantage of. Prohibition had just begun and Allen was unwillingly pushed into the ugly politics of illegal moonshining. He was threatened, his house was burned down and, finally, in a mortal showdown with a moonshiner, Allen shot a white man dead. Allen turned himself in as a mob formed to lynch him. The sheriff smuggled him past the mob and into a secure lockup in L.A. There, in a courtroom filled to overflowing with a jeering mob, he was convicted of manslaughter. Locals vowed to lynch him on his release, but he died in an “accident” in prison.

The KKK has always had a presence locally. In 1924 the Klan had a huge gathering at Verdugo Park. When night fell, 3,000 Klansmen and 15,000 spectators attended a cross burning and mass Klan induction in the San Rafael Hills above the park. In 1939 Klan membership was a problem at Glendale College. After a football game there against Pasadena City College, a young Jackie Robinson playing for PCC was beaten and hospitalized. In the ’60s the head of the California KKK lived in CV on Mayfield Avenue, and KKK literature had a home address of La Crescenta. He tried to organize a KKK rally in the foothills. Few supported the rally, and many opposed it. But as recently as the ’80s, robed Klansmen passed out hate-filled literature on the streets of Sunland.

“Racial covenants,” restricting home sales to whites only, were a standard clause in property deeds in the Crescenta Valley, and Glendale was well known as a “sundowner town” – no blacks allowed in the city after sundown. Twice, in 1935 and 1941, segregated black companies of Civilian Conservation Corps workers were to be located in the Crescenta Valley. In both instances the community, led by the Chamber of Commerce and the PTA, prevented the transfer. In 1941, a black couple attempted to buy a home in La Cañada. None other than Frank Lanterman organized a mass community meeting to urge residents to enforce racial restrictions and to let the family know that they were not welcome. In the ’40s and ’50s when Foothill Boulevard was Highway 118, black motorists were regularly stopped by the Montrose sheriffs when passing through. In the early ’70s, a black high school student joined the winning CVHS basketball team, moving with his family to La Crescenta. Their home was vandalized, but the damage was repaired by a crew of fellow CV High students.

Interestingly enough through all this hate, one black-owned business thrived in CV – Abe’s Lock and Key. Starting with a shoeshine stand on Honolulu Avenue in the ’20s, Abe was allowed a business in CV but not a home, living in nearby Altadena. He developed into a skilled locksmith, and passed the business onto his nephew. He and the next generation ran a successful black-owned business in a largely white community for many decades. Abe’s Lock and Key is still around, but has recently been sold out of the family.

Today several black and mixed-race families have homes here, and I like to think that our racial intolerance has faded. Perhaps the open wounds of America’s racial struggles are, at least locally, beginning to heal over.

  mike lawler