Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles

Making a Better World

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Making a Better World Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles

Don Parson Foreword by Kevin Starr

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London

The University of Minnesota Press acknowledges the work of Ed Dimendberg, editorial consultant, on this project. The University of Minnesota Press is grateful for permission to reprint excerpts from the following material. The oral history interviews of Herbert M. Baus and William B. Ross were conducted in 1990 by Enid H. Douglass, Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program. Quotations from the oral history interview with Rosalind Wiener Wyman are reprinted courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. Copyright 2005 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parson, Donald Craig. Making a better world : public housing, the Red Scare, and the direction of modern Los Angeles / Don Parson ; foreword by Kevin Starr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-4369-5 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8166-4370-9 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Public housing—California—Los Angeles—History. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)— History. I. Title. HD7288.78.U52L76 2005 363.5’85’0979494—dc22 2005010867

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

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For my parents, Larry T. and Patricia A. Parson

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Contents

ix

Foreword

xv

Preface

Kevin Starr

xvii

Acknowledgments

xix

Abbreviations

1

Introduction: Of Politics, Public Housing Projects, and the Modern City

13

1. The New Day of Decent Housing: Building a Public Housing Program

45

2. Homes for Heroes: Public Housing during World War II

75

3. David and Goliath: The Struggle to Expand the Public Housing Program

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4. The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”: Public Housing and the Red Scare

137

5. “Old Town, Lost Town, Shabby Town, Crook Town”: Bunker Hill and the Modern Cityscape

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6. This Modern Marvel: Chavez Ravine and the Politics of Modernism

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Conclusion: “Thus the Sixties Reap the Folly of the Fifties”

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Chronology of Public Housing Events in Los Angeles

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Appendix A: The File on Frank Wilkinson

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Appendix B: Sources

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Notes

267

Index

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Foreword Kevin Starr

or reasons that lie deep within the U.S. psyche, public housing has never come easily to these United States; nor, for that matter, has the political philosophy behind public housing, social democracy, been an enduring U.S. characteristic. Social democracy and public housing, in point of fact, have been inWnitely more successful in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the British Commonwealth than they have ever been in the United States, and this disparity dramatically underscores the revolutionary nature of the New Deal and the social democratic programs, including public housing, that had their origins in the late 1930s and that managed to survive, many of them, into the new millennium. As Gwendolyn Wright has suggested in Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (1981), the Puritans theologized the home into a prototype of the church, a sacred commonwealth, armed against the temptations of society with the father-householder ruling his Xock like an Old Testament patriarch. In a predominately Protestant nation, this metaphor of the house as a sacred and private realm persisted with great force through most of the nineteenth century. When they were Wrst introduced into the United States in the 1850s, for example, apartment buildings impressed many as scandalous in their implicitly promiscuous housing of unrelated strangers, men and women alike, along the same corridor. In innumerable court decisions, U.S. jurisprudence again and again defended the home against civil or criminal intrusion. Ownership of a home, moreover, implied personal maturity,

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Foreword

a deeper stake in history, even a better moral condition, than that reached by renters. Such an orientation, religiously reinforced, fused with the more generalized American suspicion of government and thus rendered public housing a negligible factor in U.S. life until the New Deal. Americans believed in, and were willing to support, poorhouses, orphanages and asylums of various sorts, and prisons and penitentiaries, but not publicly supported housing to any signiWcant degree. True, there were company towns aplenty in the nineteenth century, but they were exactly that: expressions of capitalism in an ostensibly benevolent guise, intended in great part to stabilize the workforce and bring it under further control. So, too, were Americans willing to move into the realm of planned suburbs, following the introduction of the commuter train, the streetcar, and the automobile; but these were private as well, as were the cooperative apartment buildings also making their appearance during this era. This pervasive orientation underscores the intellectual breakthrough represented by Catherine Bauer’s Modern Housing (1934), which challenged Americans to consider comparatively and reXectively European, especially Scandinavian, approaches to the creation of housing. Housing, Bauer argued in this pathbreaking but not overly polemical study, need not be considered a purely private affair. Government could have a role to play in the creation of housing as well as in its regulation. SigniWcant percentages of the population, in fact, even those in the middle classes, required governmental assistance if they were to be adequately housed. The very year Bauer’s book appeared, the federal government passed the Housing Act of 1934, establishing the Federal Housing Administration, which entered the housing Weld through guaranteeing mortgages. In 1937, with the passage of the Wagner-Steagall Act, the federal government declared its interest in the creation of public rental housing as well. These two acts were correctly seen in their time as near-revolutionary: the intervention of the federal government to stabilize one-family home ownership and the Wrst major policy declaration on the part of the federal government that public housing was not an un-American idea. In California, as elsewhere throughout the nation, the entrance of the federal government into housing issues on such a vast scale met with a high degree of public approval. It dovetailed with a growing awareness on the part of many California-based architects and planners that housing could be created through the political process as well

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xi

as through market forces and that architecture should prepare itself for an impending era of social values in private-sector development as well as for the rise of a European-style social democratic practice of public housing. Already, Californians had shown a social democratic streak in 1934 when writer Upton Sinclair, until recently a socialist, had won the Democratic nomination for governor on an End Poverty in California campaign—in many ways anticipatory of the New Deal— that for a while seemed on the verge of putting the lifelong socialist in the state house. Long Beach physician Francis Townsend, meanwhile, was advocating a national program of old age pensions prophetic of Social Security. In 1938 a similar pension plan went on the state ballot. It was defeated, but it did help elect Democrat Culbert Olson governor and put Democrat Sheridan Downey in the U.S. Senate, and this at long last brought the New Deal to California. As might be expected, modernist architects and planners were the most attuned to these new ideas. They considered modernism a progressive, which is to say, socially attuned, style and, as far as architecture was concerned, a style that could be mass-produced, employ industrial materials, and hence create an affordable product. The grand masters of Southern California modernism, Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, were in the late 1930s increasingly turning their attention to social questions, as were such younger architects as Gregory Ain and Raphael Soriano. Landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, meanwhile, who had worked on migrant workers’ housing in the depth of the Depression, was concerning himself with the public landscapes available to ordinary people. In Northern California, modernist William Wurster, soon to be married to Catherine Bauer and coming increasingly under her intellectual inXuence, designed Valencia Gardens, a public housing development in San Francisco (1939–43). In 1943 he began work on a PhD at Harvard concentrating on housing policy. Valencia Gardens won a number of awards, as did its contemporary in Southern California, Ramona Gardens in Los Angeles, which opened in January 1941. World War II offered the architects of California a dramatic opportunity to practice public housing in the design of a number of defense workers’ projects. The need to house defense workers and other portions of the population prompted the construction of governmentsponsored developments—Linda Vista in San Diego; Hacienda Village, Pueblo Village, Amity Compton, and Channel Heights in Los Angeles; Candlestick Cove in San Francisco; Chabot Terrace in Richmond;

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and Marin City near Sausalito—that with varying degrees of success presented publicly Wnanced housing density as an implied model for postwar development. Candlestick Cove in San Francisco, housing some 35,000 people at its peak population, has been described by historian Gerald Nash as an instant slum (Nash also points out that the 3,000unit Chabot Terrace in Richmond had neither streets nor sewers). But architect Richard Neutra’s Channel Heights project in San Pedro on the edge of the Palos Verdes peninsula facing Los Angeles Harbor— with its well-designed and convenient homes, its pathways and lawns, its schools, day care facilities, playgrounds, and shopping center—has continued to intrigue urban and architectural historians as a prototype of the planned urban development, public or private. But could such standards, such a commitment to public housing, survive the peace and the Cold War that followed? That is the question Don Parson addresses so vividly in this book. The war precipitated a seat-of-the-pants social democracy in which ideological conXicts were put aside for the duration. At Wrst glance, Los Angeles would seem to have been a good candidate for the continuation of the social democratic public housing experiment. Successful defense projects had destigmatized public housing. With the inXux of war workers who remained in Southern California and the return of veterans, there was a dramatic need for housing in the city. Ramona Gardens had met with success. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the mainline Protestant churches, together with the Jewish community, appeared favorable. The left-liberal Congress of Industrial Organizations had grown to great inXuence in the region, and union-afWliated intellectuals were taking public housing seriously as an option for employed workers. Above all else, the reform mayor of Los Angeles, Fletcher Bowron, was solidly behind the development of public housing of various sorts (some for resale back to residents) throughout the city. In Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles, Don Parson chronicles how this momentum was lost within the decade of the 1950s: how Los Angeles, that is, turned from public housing—and by implication, from anything resembling social democracy—and reconstituted itself as one of the most private cities in the United States. The causes, as he suggests, were many. First, the wartime détente between the Left and the Right began almost immediately to fall apart in the late 1940s. Second, racial tension—already evident in the so-called zoot-suit riots of June 1943—was gaining strength in a city whose African American

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population had increased tenfold because of wartime emigration to Los Angeles by African Americans seeking work in the shipyards and other defense industries. African American novelist Chester Himes, moving to Los Angeles during this period to work in the shipyards, found Los Angeles the most Jim Crow city he had ever experienced outside the U.S. South. In his novel If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1945), Himes chronicled the efforts of African American defense worker Robert Jones to deal with the miasmic fog of racism that had begun to envelop the city. Most important as a factor was the dropping of the Iron Curtain, the beginning of the Cold War, and the anti-Communist crusade. In California, state senator John Tenney—a one-time dance-hall pianist otherwise known only for the composition of the song “Mexicali Rose”—turned the Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, which he chaired, into a grand inquisition lasting through the decade. Anti-Communism, however, was not without some connection to the question of just exactly who would control the burgeoning real estate market in Southern California in the postwar era. Not only was public housing vulnerable to attack from Red-baiters as communistic, it also infuriated the Southern California development community by offering a prototype that would challenge, if only subliminally, their own involvement in a boom market that would last for the rest of the century. That is why the saga of Chavez Ravine, so adeptly chronicled by Parson, is of such importance, representing, as it did, just about every sector with an interest in the public housing debate. First of all, there were the Mexican American residents of this barrio, who did not wish to be disturbed in the Wrst place but who, if they had to be disturbed, wanted a guaranteed return to the public housing proposed for the site. Then there was the grandeur of the Elysian Park Heights project itself: 3,364 housing units for 17,000 people on a 278-acre site at the very heart of the city, designed by no less a team than Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander. Should such a project be successful, it might provide a model for housing that would come into direct competition with the private sector by showcasing a viable alternative to private ownership and suburban sprawl. The physicians who were even then in San Francisco and Los Angeles organizing themselves as the Permanente Medical Group afWliated with the Kaiser Healthcare Foundation were facing the same sort of attack, including the charge that the Kaiser Health Plan was communistic. The Permanente physicians prevailed,

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and today the Kaiser Plan, serving some 6 million Americans, is a respected prototype for the social delivery of medicine. As Parson chronicles, however, the private sector, Wghting behind the shield of anti-Communism, defeated the Elysian Park Heights project. The Chavez Ravine barrio was hence left vulnerable to takeover, which happened when the land was conWscated for Dodger Stadium. At this point, Don Parson argues, one Los Angeles—at least one possible portion of one Los Angeles—was plowed under, and a triumphant private sector–oriented corporatism took its place. True, a number of other public housing projects had been completed before 1960, some of them beautifully designed and landscaped; but these were now perceived as housing for the poor, meaning, in signiWcant measure, housing for segregated minorities. From this perspective, public housing—which social democracy envisioned as a Keynesian partner to the private sector—had regressed into a charitable alternative. The same thing did not happen to public schools, nor did it happen to public beaches, public highways, public parks, public libraries, or other such public amenities. These were not stigmatized enterprises; indeed, they were cited as triumphs of collective culture. Fifty years later, as this book appears, housing in California and elsewhere across the United States has reached a crisis of affordability. A signiWcant number of homeowners in California admit that they could not afford to buy their home today at present prices. Enterprises such as the Bridge Corporation and a number of similar organizations are struggling to create private-sector housing in partnership with the public sector. Federal, state, and local government, meanwhile, is coming up with an alphabet soup of programs of subsidy and support in the housing Weld. Still, the housing crisis continues. Should it reach a point in which signiWcant percentages of Californians—or Americans, for that matter—cannot afford such a basic commodity as housing or are Wnding themselves forced to pay a debilitating amount of rent, might not the social democratic notion of public housing as a respectable alternative, even a partner, make a dramatic comeback? If it does—and there are signs that it might—then the history that Don Parson chronicles with such skill will serve as a prophetic paradigm of what can (and did!) go wrong and of what the underlying difWculties are (and remain!). This thoroughly researched study can also serve as a catalyst to corrective and creative action.

Preface

cross the nation, public housing projects are viewed as occupying one of the lower rungs of a contemporary urban hell. News items highlight the problems of the police in the projects as they try to deal with drug trafWcking, murders, rapes, ethnic dissension, gang activity, and so on. Social controls imposed on public housing residents include heavy-handed law enforcement, metal detectors to screen for weapons, and a draconian eviction policy for tenants (and their families) who are perceived as errant and socially undesirable. The projects are the ideal backdrops for movies or TV shows that seek to depict the antisocial environment from which the poor, if they are to succeed, have to emerge and escape. It is of little surprise that the proposed demolition of the projects is greeted with cheers from many quarters. Under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI program (HOPE is an acronym for Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere), which provides demolition and revitalization grants to “eradicate severely distressed public housing,” the Los Angeles City Housing Authority is downsizing its projects. Utilizing both public funds and private investment, the public housing projects are becoming mixedincome communities that feature for-sale homes and Section 8 rental assistance as well as conventional public housing. In shelter-poor Los Angeles, the modernist credo of “less is more” can be perversely applied to current public housing policy.

A

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Public housing was not always regarded with disdain. Viewed as a way to make a better world, public housing had been a very popular and progressive program from its federal inception in 1937 through the 1949 Housing Act. It was supported by a broad range of civic, labor, church, and ethnic associations, and it was captained by a vigorous and vibrant social democratic left. Innovative and very livable design solutions for the projects were developed by left-leaning socially conscious architects. The roots of the ofWcial antipathy toward public housing can be found in the postwar years as that program’s formal, institutional, and popular support corroded in the caustic political atmosphere of the domestic Cold War. Los Angeles was at the apex of the Cold War Red Scare. I Wrst became aware of Frank Wilkinson and the anti-Communist attack on the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles some twenty-three years ago. A very kind and patient man, Wilkinson submitted himself to my academic interrogation via interviews, phone conversations, and written correspondence. I used the same techniques to question other public “housers” in Los Angeles. Their commitment and dedication to a better world were as forceful as that of Wilkinson. Their accomplishments in the public housing program were, like those of Wilkinson, the realization of constructive and praiseworthy reforms. Unfortunately, and again like Wilkinson, their involvement in the liberal and leftist politics of Los Angeles was abruptly terminated with the accusations of Communism and socialism during the Cold War. A chronology of the public housing movement in Los Angeles and the consequences of its demise seemed important and exciting to tell. This book ends with the destruction of the social democratic left and the rise of movement politics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The fact that, at present, there is a sparsity of establishment support for public housing in the formal political arena is due, quite simply, to the absence of a social democratic left. This truism is not to be bemoaned. The Left was a political form advanced by the working class to further its interests. The destruction of the Left signaled a defeat of a political form, not of working-class politics. To accurately assess the current status of public housing from a working-class perspective requires not only a historical approach but also that of a participantobserver. This book might be considered a modest contribution to provide some political and historical context of public housing for those who are now seeking to make a better world.

Acknowledgments

his project was Wrst conceived in 1981 with fellow UCLA student Laura Chase. In 1983, the Southern California Quarterly published my “Los Angeles’ ‘Headline-Happy Public Housing War,’” which is the basis for chapter 4. A rough Wrst draft of the book was completed in 1985, but I then assumed the task of undertaking extensive additional original research, applying deeper theoretical context, and rewriting the entire manuscript. I redirected the theoretical course of the book to examine the history of public housing within the development of modern Los Angeles. The foundation of this discourse came from two other papers I wrote, “The Development of Redevelopment: Public Housing and Urban Renewal in Los Angeles,” from the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (1982) and “‘This Modern Marvel’: Bunker Hill, Chavez Ravine, and the Politics of Modernism in Los Angeles,” which was published in the Southern California Quarterly (1993). For their assistance and support, I would like to acknowledge the following people: Rudy Acuña, Robert Alexander, Eric Avila, Brandee Berndt, Richard Berry, Judy Branfman, Drayton Bryant, John Chase, Laura Chase, Beatrice Chievici, Carolyn Cole, Sarah Cooper, Dana Cuff, Tony Denzer, Simon Eisner, Simon Elliott, Michael Engh, Bill Estrada, Steve Flusty, Liette Gilbert, Jo Ann Goff, Wilbur Gordon, Sidney Green, Kenneth Hahn, Oliver Haskell, Brad Hunt, Noemi Hernandez Jefferes, Roger Johnson, John J. Jones, Roger Keil, Jackie Leavitt, Ron López,

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xviii

Acknowledgments

Peter Marcuse, Robert Marshall, Alice McGrath, Steve Moga, Natalia Molina, Jack and Rose Naiditch, Penny Nanopoulos, Octavio Olvera, Merry Ovnick, Mary Pardo, Larry Parson, Patricia Parson, Dolores Ramirez, Jeff Rankin, Deborah Hart Redman, Edward Roybal, Hynda Rudd, Joel Schwartz, Mel Scott, David Sigler, Tom Sitton, Ed Soja, Kevin Starr, Ricardo Tapanes, Dace Taube, David Travers, Mary Tyler, Marcos Vargas, Marc Weiss, Don (“Dwight”) Whittemore, Frank Wilkinson, Mike Willard, and Hal Wise. Maps in the book were prepared by Alexander (“Sasha”) Ortenberg. I am indebted to the staffs of the following institutions for their assistance: Thousand Oaks Library, Los Angeles Public Library, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles City Archives, UCLA Special Collections, USC Regional History Center, UCLA Law Library, the Huntington Library, the Urban Archives of CSUN, Special Collections of CSULA, the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System, and the California State Library. I would also like to thank the membership of the H-Urban and H-California electronic discussion groups for responding to my queries.

Abbreviations

ACLU ADA AFL AVC CASH CBD CDC CHA CHC CIO CPC CPS CRA CUAC DAV DCA DDHC FHA FPHA HHFA HUAC IPP

American Civil Liberties Union Americans for Democratic Action American Federation of Labor American Veterans Committee Committee against Socialist Housing central business district California Democratic Council City Housing Authority (Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles) Citizens’ Housing Council Congress of Industrial Organizations City Planning Commission California Physicians’ Service Community Redevelopment Agency California Un-American Activities Committee Disabled American Veterans Downtown Community Association Division of Defense Housing Coordination Federal Housing Administration Federal Public Housing Authority Housing and Home Finance Agency House Un-American Activities Committee Independent Progressive Party xix

xx

LAPD LHC MHC NAACP NAHB NAHO NAREB NCARL NHA NPHC PCA PHA PWA RPAA T-E-W Bill UAW USHA VEHP WPA

Abbreviations

Los Angeles Police Department Labor Housing Conference Municipal Housing Commission National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Association of Home Builders National Association of Housing Officials National Association of Real Estate Boards National Committee against Repressive Legislation National Housing Agency National Public Housing Conference Progressive Citizens of America Public Housing Administration Public Works Administration Regional Planning Association of America Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill United Auto Workers U.S. Housing Authority Veterans’ Emergency Housing Program Work Projects Administration

INTRODUCTION

Of Politics, Public Housing Projects, and the Modern City

n June 23, 1947, Frank Wilkinson, public relations ofWcer of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, spoke to the Women’s Acorn Club in Pasadena. The topic was the staggering postwar housing shortage and the role public housing could play in alleviating the crisis. When questioned about residential districts that were occupied only by African Americans and when asked whether public housing would replicate this spatial polarity, Wilkinson replied, according to the California Eagle, that “he did not believe that segregated housing projects contributed towards the making of a better world. He thought,” the paper continued, “that learning to live together makes for a better understanding among all the people.”1 The phrase “the making of a better world” embodied the intent of the public housing projects in Los Angeles. After the public housing program’s stormy inception in the late 1930s and after the tumultuous struggles of World War II, many now, when Wilkinson spoke in 1947, saw the projects as the templates of a new social and spatial order for modern Los Angeles. The public housing projects of Los Angeles, through their commitment to integration, tenant democracy, and modern housing for those outside the private housing market, must certainly be described as a contribution to the making of a better world. This book is an examination of the political history of the public housing projects and the consequences of their demise in the development of modern Los Angeles. The term “projects” deWnes not only an

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2

Introduction

architectural design but also a historical period of what I call “community modernism.” All public housing facilities built in Los Angeles between 1939 and 1955 were socially planned projects, ranging in size from the 100-unit Rose Hill Courts (1942) to the 1,110-unit Nickerson Gardens (1955). There have been no conventional projects constructed by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles since San Fernando Gardens in 1955.2 The termination of project construction in Los Angeles was a consequence of the Red Scare in the city’s public housing war of the early 1950s. This seminal conXict was perhaps the most explicitly political instance of similar policy battles that raged through U.S. cities as part of the domestic Cold War. With the passage of time, it has been obscured and forgotten, as left/right political cleavages and McCarthyism have been dismissed, discredited, or trivialized and then dismissed from memory. To qualify the foregoing statement of purpose: The history of the public housing projects in Los Angeles is explored from the perspective of the contemporary political Left of the 1930s through the 1950s. This entails a sympathetic assessment of the projects as a means to forge a better world. Following the public housing war, urban renewal—nascent in public housing legislation—emerged as the means to reshape modern Los Angeles. The resulting cityscape, however, was a far cry from the community modernism envisioned by the Left. Interests antithetical to the Left promoted “corporate modernism,” the monumental gloriWcation of the commercial urban economy. The Great Depression of 1929 signaled the inability of the contemporary state form to deal with the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism. The interventionist state, as theorized by the economist John Maynard Keynes, sought to reestablish an equilibrium for capital accumulation by incorporating class struggle within the state. The new state form encompassed a broad amalgam of concerns, ranging from economic self-interest to humanitarian impulses, each having the immediate goal of disentangling the nation from the ravages of the Great Depression.3 From the perspective of the working class, Keynes’s call for state intervention into the economy was translated into the demand for a welfare state in which the government would serve as a guarantor of working-class interests against the ravages of unbridled capitalism. Social security, educational opportunity, public housing, and collective bargaining were some of the elements of the welfare state.

Introduction

3

The class composition of organized labor, ethnic and racial minorities, women, and immigrants—the “Roosevelt coalition”—was the social foundation of the planned economy of the welfare state. The political Left engaged in popular struggles, such as that for public housing, as part of the popular movements for a positive and forwardlooking government intervention that would improve the way of life for the Roosevelt coalition. David Gold has described a Left, a Center, and a Right that constituted the political participants of the Keynesian coalition during the restructuring of the U.S. state from the Depression to the immediate postwar period. The Right comprised conservatives who participated in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal because of the threat of mass unemployment and social disruption. The Center contained the mainstream and anti-Communist liberals and, particularly following the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, the anti-Stalinist radicals who would soon become cold warriors. The Left emphasized a popular redistribution of the social wealth of the nation, full employment, and a much greater state role in the achievement of social goals. It included CIO unions, and many groups loosely labelled as liberal. The left coalition saw the New Deal as a beginning and wanted state policy to achieve what the New Deal heretofore promised. It included those who advocated social and economic planning and other forms of structural change. . . . The left coalition wanted state social spending to grow and wanted the state to assume a greater role in guaranteeing the well-being of workers, minorities, farmers and, in general, the less privileged.4

The Left of the Keynesian coalition were union leaders, liberal politicians, socially conscious professionals, and community and religious leaders who sought to deWne and wield the welfare state in a direction that would beneWt the Roosevelt coalition. This left-liberal popular front comprised persons espousing a diverse set of viewpoints, ranging from members of the Communist Party to left Democrats to independent radicals to fellow travelers to non-Communist liberals. “The New Deal,” recalled Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party in the 1930s, “had put America on the road to the welfare state.” The New Deal had the “enthusiastic support” of those Communists who understood reform movements as indistinguishable from a popular discontent with capitalism. The constituent elements of this left-liberal popular front shared a rejection of nineteenth-century laissez-faire

4

Introduction

liberalism and an anticapitalist ideology. Social planning was the means to implement that ideology.5 The left-liberal popular front’s political agenda emerged from a popular social democratic reform that was Wrmly anchored in the Roosevelt coalition. The struggles of the various social elements of that coalition were seen as being complementary parts in the realization of welfare state programs. African Americans, women, and organized labor would each contribute their own needs, wants, and desires in the formation, extension, and experience of, for example, the public housing program. Rather than understanding housing reform as a way of fabricating a more humane capitalism, much of the Left, through different struggles, saw the possibility of transcending this limited goal in an effort to make a better world. Utilizing the visions and struggles of popular movements for public housing, left-leaning public housing architects, managers, and legislative proponents perceived their role as one of channeling the demands for a better world upward. Contemporary paradigms of urban form simply could not grasp the initiative to make a better world, an initiative that was shared by the public housing proponents of the Left. The Chicago School of urban sociology saw the cityscape as the result of the ecological processes of invasion, competition, accommodation, segregation, and succession occurring in well-deWned human communities with their own peculiar selective and cultural characteristics. By confusing the socially constructed city with the plant and animal ecology of the natural world, the Chicago School could posit segregation and exploitation by race or class as part of the natural order. “In the great city,” wrote Robert Park, espousing geographic Darwinism, “the poor, the vicious, and the delinquent [are] peculiarly Wt for the environment in which they are condemned to exist.” The city was impervious to social reform, for urban ecology was to be accepted, not contradicted: “Reformers try in vain,” wrote Roderick McKenzie of misguided and futile attempts to achieve a better world, “little realizing that they are working in opposition to the general principles of the ecological order.”6 The Left tended to disregard the Chicago School’s dispassionate urban sociology with its emphasis on the irreproachable spatiality of the capitalist city. According to the Left, the urban form of Los Angeles was better viewed as a product of exploitative economic forces and inequitable social forces. Subsequent injustices might be confronted and redressed by an informed citizenry that actively inXuenced

Introduction

5

the legislatures, executive branches, bureaucracies, and courts in a process of social democratic reform. Such reform consisted of popular pressure, via the tactics of election, petition, and demonstration, brought to bear on the institutions of the formal political arena. For those striving to make a better world, the city was not ecological but intensely political. Following World War II, both the Roosevelt coalition and the leftliberal popular front began to unravel. The complementary struggles that had precipitated the 1937 Housing Act became increasingly fragmented as the elements of that coalition sought answers to their respective housing questions by incongruous means and in separate locales. The struggles of organized labor were conWned to the suburbs, minorities were restricted to the ghettos and barrios, and women were immured behind the kitchen counter. The center of the Keynesian coalition came to the fore as the wartime unity of the Left, the Right, and the Center fragmented. The Right wanted to eliminate the welfare state and revert to a laissez-faire economy. In the face of the conservative congressional victories of 1946, liberals sought to maintain the gains of the New Deal by ejecting or isolating their former leftist allies from the Keynesian coalition. The Communist Party, seen as slavishly devoted to Soviet policy, was the Achilles’ heel of the Left. By identifying the Left with Communism, the leftist baby was, in effect, discarded along with the Communist bath water. The public housing program that was promoted by the Left went down the same drain. As a consequence, the left-liberal popular front became increasingly polarized. The Left—embodied by the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA)—were at one antipode. The liberals—represented by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)—were at the other. These “vital center” liberals, as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. described them, would save capitalism from itself by offering an intelligent governance of which the Right, limited by self-interest, was incapable. The Left—in contrast to the vital center, whose political vision was circumscribed by a pragmatic realpolitik—had the audacity to envision a progressively better world. The center undertook social reform not from a desire to make a better world but, as Mary Sperling McAuliffe says of the ADA, pursued it “with a certainty of human frailty and a suspicion that the ideal society was but a naive dream.” With the 1948 defeat of Henry A. Wallace and the Progressive Party and the Left’s consequent loss of

6

Introduction

inXuence in the formal political structure, the vital center dominated the foreign policy of the national Democratic Party.7 The eclipse of the Left in domestic policy was not as decisive, as sudden, or as complete as the rout of the Progressive Party in 1948. Truman’s electoral success in that year was a consequence of a motivated Roosevelt coalition, which was reXected in Truman’s subsequent Fair Deal. The legitimate heir to the New Deal, the Fair Deal policies, particularly the hard-won 1949 Housing Act, were seen as major victories by the Left. In mobilizing consensus for its foreign policy, however, the Truman administration tapped popular concerns over national security and internal subversion. Invoking anti-Communism to justify restricting civil liberties, the Truman presidency equated dissent with disloyalty, opening the door to the Red Scare. Propelled with demagogic intensity, McCarthyism invaded domestic politics in the early 1950s and regarded even the mildest liberal reform as suspect. McCarthyism, as Alonzo Hamby observed, “served as an effective bludgeon against the Fair Deal and the liberal movement.”8 Within the (nominally) nonpartisan milieu of local politics in Los Angeles, the Left, albeit fragmenting, remained a political force, informing public debate and promoting an agenda of social democratic reform in matters of housing, urban redevelopment, rents, education, air pollution, and so forth. During the public housing war of the early 1950s, Frank Wilkinson and four other employees of the Los Angeles City Housing Authority (CHA) were accused of being Communists in an orchestrated tragedy that doomed the city’s public housing program. McCarthyism was a spectacular Wnale to an effort to build a better world in Los Angeles by means of the public housing projects. This event marked the exit of the Left from the politics of the city. At the same time, the political unity and dominance of the Right and the Center—the “pro-growth coalition”—was waxing. The progrowth coalition united liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, as well as many elements from the waning left-liberal popular front, particularly the leadership of organized labor. Financial and political rewards were proportionate to an expanding urban economy of a corporate modernist Los Angeles. In realizing corporate modernism, community modernism and public housing projects were rejected in favor of urban renewal and suburban housing tracts.9 Public housing architecture in Los Angeles embodied design principles that might provide a template for the modern city—what I refer to as

Introduction

7

a “community modernism.” Public housing projects provided space for human interaction in the form of recreation, shared interests, neighborhood politics, housework, shopping, leisure, and a common sociability. They provided the skeletal framework on which an everyday life might fully Xourish, and they reXected the Left’s social democratic aesthetic of a planned civic culture. Through the architecture of public housing, one might glimpse the Left’s vision of a modern Los Angeles. For left-leaning architects, the design of housing was being transformed from the production of works of art for a well-to-do clientele into the concern of a humane and social profession. Critically examining their profession, architects saw their role as moving beyond the functional nuances of formal design in order to comprehensively embody the social, economic, and technical factors of mass housing. Los Angeles public housing architect Robert Alexander wrote that after his graduation from Cornell University in 1930, he was “out of work

Figure 1. Residents chatting at Aliso Village. The public housing projects in Los Angeles were characterized by human-scaled modern housing set in a superblock. (Security Pacific Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)

8

Introduction

and had plenty of time between ditch digging and an occasional movie set design to think about my ‘practice.’ I decided that houses for the rich were also for the birds and that ‘housing’ was a vast social and economic problem that might be solved by technology and economic manipulation and that my professional life work would be more effective tackling these problems.”10 InXuenced by both the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) and the modern movement in architecture, public housing architects were explicitly concerned with the design of humane, modern communities. From the days of public housing’s inception during the New Deal, wrote reformer Albert Mayer, architects and planners had “seen in public housing the chance of creating . . . brave new communities—uncluttered, throbbing with new life and vigor, beacons of urbane living.”11 Public housing architects saw the “residential superblock” as the infrastructure of the modern community. Developed by the RPAA’s Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, the superblock’s site plan embodied curvilinear streets, common courts, open green space, community centers, and separated pedestrian and vehicular circulation. Public housing in Los Angeles was characterized by single-, two-, or threestory residential apartments designed in the simple and functional style of the modern movement and sited within the park-like environment of the superblock. CHA architect Richard Neutra saw public housing as sited in order to engender a neighborhood with “social gathering space” and “communal play areas for children.”12 A modern city in which human communities were understood as the ultimate component of the urban form was a political goal envisioned by the left-liberal popular front. Federal public housing administrator Langdon Post described this community modernism in 1938: Streets will be closed, rerouted or widened, parks and playgrounds will be properly distributed, and new health centers and schools strategically located. Large courts with vistas of green grass and trees will gradually replace the miles and miles of dirty narrow shafts and unsightly backyards. Health will improve, crime will decrease, and morals will rise. In short, we will eventually build cities for people to live in with surroundings that create contentment.

The concept of community modernism would remain in good standing among public housing proponents into the 1950s. In a 1951 series of articles on “Los Angeles in the Year 2000” published by the Mirror,

Introduction

9

architect Richard Neutra prophesied that “our huge urban area will be more ‘articulated’ into neighborhood communities, each crystallized around a green commons with schools, clubhouse, health center and recreational facilities.” Experimentation with the architecture and design of community modernism came to a halt following the public housing war and the McCarthyism of the 1950s.13 In terms of urban land use, modernism was characterized by a largescale rationalism, functionalism, and “creative destruction” propelled by Daniel Burnham’s dictum “Make no little plans.” Although both the Left and its opponents shared that perspective of the modern city, “modernism” is perceived here in political terms. The concept is understood as having an explicit class content and direction, not as a neutral descriptor. Only with the demise of the Left in the 1950s and the delegation of its corresponding vision of community modernism to the dustbin of history can one speak of the emergence of a singular and deWnitive modern Los Angeles. More precisely, the city was, by then, circumscribed by a vision of corporate modernism. The direction of actual modern Los Angeles is intimately bound to the defeat of public housing.14 Corporate modernism can be conceptualized as inner-city redevelopment for commercial purposes on a monumental scale, with modern housing being relegated primarily to the suburban periphery in the form of single-family homes. Albert C. Martin Jr., head of the dominant and oldest architectural Wrm in downtown Los Angeles (Albert C. Martin and Associates), recounted the corporate modernism of the postwar period that saw “the great return to the urban core, the evolution of large banking interests and all of the support facilities for banking, [and] the evolution of large government centers, with all of their support.” In the suburbs, large-scale community builders sought to lower the cost of suburban development and expand the homebuyer market to include increasingly lower income wage-earners, resulting in a marketing conXict with and an antipathy to public housing.15 Corporate modernism forsook human-scaled community modernism in favor of commercial and monumental gloriWcation of the central city. Murray Bookchin has described the monumental downtown of the modern metropolis, where humanity has been overpowered by commercialism, thus: “The gigantism of the structures dwarfs the sense of individuality of those who walk in their shadows and the less fortunate ones who occupy their cubicles. It matters little whether

10

Introduction

this effect is calculated or not, the important point is that it is not accidental.”16 The burgeoning cityscape of corporate modernism paralleled the decline of community modernism. The initial intimacy of public housing and urban redevelopment and then their sharp divergence following the public housing war can be seen in the history of Bunker Hill, transformed via urban renewal from a blighted district to the showcase of modern Los Angeles. In 1962 Albert Mayer surveyed the “arrested development” of public housing architecture. He saw architectural talent and resources directed toward “the famous monuments in the city center” and called for a decentralization of architectural accumulation so as to beneWt the neighborhoods and communities of daily life: “If we are achieving architectural excellence in what may be called the ‘fancy’ buildings and dullness or architectural poverty in the workaday areas, the record is bad: a record not in accord with our democratic professions.”17 Since the New Deal in the 1930s, the left-liberal popular front had found its political expression in the Democratic Party. With the demise of the Keynesian left, its constituents, a fragmented Roosevelt coalition, were confronted by a formal political structure that advocated a corporate modern Los Angeles. The continuing participation of the Roosevelt coalition in the city’s formal political structure was dependent on determining whom the Democrats represented. To what extent would the party embrace the pro-growth dictates of corporate modernism as opposed to the erstwhile populism of the Left? As John Mollenkopf has argued, political entrepreneurs seeking to coalesce political support sought to capitalize on the concerns of the Roosevelt coalition. But the failure or inability to politically sustain this disgruntlement ultimately curtailed the possibilities of extending or realigning formal politics.18 In terms of political action, those discontented with the direction of modernism faced a choice between an increasingly ineffective social democratic reform and the unmediated struggle of the movement. The discontents embraced the latter as their political vehicle of choice. I deWne the movement as a political form utilizing tactics of demonstration, direct-action, and refusal that developed autonomously from party control. This process could be seen in the former public housing site at Chavez Ravine as it metamorphosed into the modernism of Dodger Stadium. The central argument of the book is as follows: The public housing program was achieved through a strategy of social democratic reform

Introduction

11

on the part of the left-liberal popular front. The ideal of community modernism describes the resulting class-based urban geography. Public housing opponents responded to these social democratic successes, particularly that of the 1949 Housing Act, with the politics of the Red Scare, which had eliminated the Left from the political arena by the early 1950s. Liberals and conservatives now joined forces as a progrowth coalition. They used urban renewal to shape the city to the reality of corporate modernism. This book is made up of six chapters illustrating the above: Chapter 1 addresses the public housing program’s inception during the Great Depression; chapter 2 outlines its contribution to the home front in World War II; chapters 3 and 4 describe, respectively, the postwar efforts to extend the program and the downfall of public housing with the McCarthyism of the early 1950s; chapter 5 shows the divergence of public housing and urban renewal, as could be seen on Bunker Hill, leading to the actual corporate modern cityscape; and chapter 6 describes the transformation of LA politics as reXected in the conXict concerning the erstwhile public housing site in Chavez Ravine. The conclusion brieXy compares the public housing experiences of Los Angeles with those of other cities during the Cold War, presents some implications as to the decline of the city’s Left, and offers some insights into the genesis of the urban discontents of modern Los Angeles.

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CHAPTER 1

The New Day of Decent Housing: Building a Public Housing Program

he massive unemployment of the Great Depression directly affected the housing conditions of the many people across a broad spectrum of class and race who were unable to pay rent or to maintain their accommodations. Many saw a federal public housing program as an experiment to deal with the social unrest engendered by the housing crisis. The left-liberal popular front sought to harness the political energy of the Roosevelt coalition to the goal of better housing via the 1937 Housing Act, while progressives in Los Angeles sought to bring the federal program to a level where it could be realized in the everyday life of the city. After the public housing program was established by the U.S. Congress, its arrival and consolidation in Los Angeles was faltering and beset with difWculties. The direction taken by the local program would be deWned by the ability of the Keynesian coalition’s left wing to marshal popular support for the program in municipal politics.

T

Federal Public Housing Social unrest was a consequence of the housing crisis during the Great Depression. Unemployed Councils, frequently organized by the Communist Party, initiated rent strikes and bodily prevented evictions of those unable to pay rent, sometimes culminating in violent and bloody “rent riots.” “They represent an enforced solidarity of interest throughout the most varied cross-sections of American life,” wrote public housing advocate Albert Mayer of the Unemployed Councils in 1934, “from 13

14

The New Day of Decent Housing

common laborers and professional workers right through to former pillars of the working class; in a word, the disinherited.” Mayer saw “thrilling possibilities” for the public housing movement anchored in the Unemployed Councils. In 1935 he wrote that “the failure to cope with the question [of public housing] promptly and adequately may well lead to violent protest, of which the Harlem riots of a few months ago may be a specimen.”1 This social turmoil was translated into popular demand for a public housing program. Many city ofWcials across the United States viewed public housing as a means of defusing the direct-action politics of the Unemployed Councils. Mayors of New York and Chicago called for moratoriums on evictions in the wake of such disturbances. Urban historian John Metzger credits the 1935 Harlem riot with precipitating the planning of the PWA’s Hudson River Houses.2 Federal public housing during the Great Depression was Wrst initiated by the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1933. The Housing Division’s purpose was to reduce unemployment and increase purchasing power by means of a program of slum clearance and the construction of low-cost housing. Twenty-one thousand units were built under this program in order to provide modern housing to those whose incomes made them ineligible for private housing, to eradicate or rehabilitate slum areas, and to demonstrate the practicability of large-scale community planning. The slum-clearance activities of the Housing Division were severely constrained by the 1935 United States v. Certain Lands in City of Louisville. A federal district court afWrmed a lower court’s ruling that the PWA could not use the power of eminent domain to condemn private property under the Constitution’s welfare clause in the absence of an overall national purpose. The National Industrial Recovery Act, under which the PWA functioned, had “no standards supplied with reference to low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects.”3 When the Louisville decision restricted the government’s ability to use the Housing Division of the PWA for public housing and slum clearance, Senator Robert Wagner introduced Senate bills in 1935, 1936, and 1937 to establish a federal public housing program. His legislative efforts were promoted by organized labor, church, racial and ethnic organizations, the National Public Housing Conference (NPHC), and the Labor Housing Conference (LHC). As part of a national housing policy, to be administered by a national housing agency and yet implemented by local housing authorities, the proposed public housing

The New Day of Decent Housing

15

program would avoid the pitfalls of federal eminent domain legalities that beset the PWA.4 The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had been opposed to government production of housing, but the social disruption and high unemployment of the Depression changed their orientation. Timothy McDonnell, author of the seminal history of the 1937 Housing Act, wrote that by 1935 the AFL had become “the largest and most important pressure group in the Wght for public housing.” President William Green of the AFL would declare that public housing was “must” legislation that the great number of unemployed demanded. Senator Wagner noted that organized labor had a “double interest in public housing” because the unions were “representative of both the unemployed building workers and of low-income families in need of better housing.” “To provide [unemployed] citizens with work,” editorialized the American Federationist in favor of the Wagner-Steagall Bill, “while at the same time making available to millions of families a Wtting environment for home life would be a most constructive step in national conservation.” The U.S. Housing Authority (USHA) listed the reasons labor supported public housing: Public housing is an opportunity for men and women to help build and manage their own homes. Its low rents mean more money for the tenants for food and clothes and a better standard of living. Its close association in well-planned communities means more organization, more cooperative action, and more democracy.5

The descendants of the “material feminists” promoted a vision of public housing with a strong emphasis on social planning, rationalized housework, and a shared community life. At a 1935 Senate hearing regarding public housing legislation, over Wve hundred women besieged the Capitol with signs bearing such messages as “My third child died Wghting pneumonia in a windowless room,” “Our children may be the next to burn,” and “Death takes no holiday in the slum.” Eugenie Ladner Birch has emphasized that springing from traditional female interests in social housekeeping on local levels, [public housing agitation] grew to national importance as women united to promote their ideas. Along the way, women supplied the intellectual basis, political leadership, and executive expertise as well as rank and Wle support which gave early housing policy a distinct Xavor.6

16

The New Day of Decent Housing

Women were prominent public housing proponents. The NPHC’s Edith Elmer Wood abandoned the restrictive legislation that marked Progressive-Era housing reform to become a leading public housing advocate. Catherine Bauer was an organizer for the LHC, whose purpose was to garner AFL support for public housing. She came out of the intellectual circle of the RPAA. Both Wood, in her 1923 Housing Progress in Western Europe, and later Bauer, in the 1934 Modern Housing, presented European case studies to demonstrate that government agencies could economically build and maintain high-quality, healthful, and efWcient low-income housing.7 Public housing opponents included the National Association of Real Estate Boards, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Apartment House Owners Association, the U.S. Saving and Loan League, and other related

Figure 2. Organized labor was integral in the formation of the public housing program. From Federal Works Agency and U.S. Housing Authority, “By and for Labor,” Public Housing 3 (December 1941).

The New Day of Decent Housing

17

organizations. Concerted hostility on the part of these interests—which would become popularly known as the real estate lobby—stalled passage of public housing legislation in 1935 and 1936. Timothy McDonnell wrote that the opponents of the Wagner bills agreed that “public housing was a dangerous socialistic experiment which threatened free enterprise and the traditional American principles of government; public housing also threatened the continued prosperity of the enterprise that each of them represented.” Was the public regulation of housing “the backdoor to socialism?” queried New York City Housing Commissioner Langdon Post. “I can only say that we had better let socialism come in that way and give it a bite to eat in the kitchen or else it may enter by the front door and take over the whole house.”8 When the Wagner-Steagall Bill gained Wnal congressional approval in August 1937 as the U.S. Housing Act, public housing proponents had achieved most of their legislative goals. The stated purpose of the statute was to promote the general welfare by alleviating or preventing unemployment and “to remedy the unsafe and insanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for families of low-income.” The act established a U.S. Housing Authority (USHA) to provide $500 million in loans to local authorities for the planning, construction, and management of low-rent housing. The rent charged for this housing would be a function of a tenant’s income, which would also be the basis for eligibility for occupancy. Annual federal subsidies would make up the difference between the market value and the rent received for a housing unit.9 Prominent “houser” Catherine Bauer enthused that the act was “the single important left-wing bill” to be approved by Congress in the previous eight months, and “a radical piece of legislation—perhaps the most clear-cut and uncompromising adopted under the New Deal.” A number of items desired by public housing proponents were, after a process of debate and concession, omitted from the Wnal legislation. A provision requiring the “elimination . . . of unsafe or insanitary dwellings . . . substantially equal in number to the number of newly constructed dwellings provided” muted some of the claims by the real estate lobby that public housing would compete with the private market should those units be constructed on vacant land. Such compromises were neither fatal nor immediately debilitating for public housing proponents. Bauer referred to these concessions as “jokers [that are] for the most part fairly superWcial, and should be capable of change by

18

The New Day of Decent Housing

force of public demand.” The 1937 Housing Act, as Brad Hunt has observed, “marked a signiWcant expansion of the American welfare state.”10 In order for federally funded public housing to be implemented at the local level, enabling legislation had to be enacted Wrst by states and then by city or county jurisdictions. Passed by the State Senate and Assembly on four different occasions, California’s enabling legislation was vetoed thrice by Republican governor Frank Merriam. “Of all Merriam’s many crimes,” caustically noted the Epic News (of the End Poverty in California clubs) of his Wrst refusal, “that pocket veto of the state housing bill is perhaps the worst.” Following a strong lobbying effort by labor unions, local government ofWcials, and citizen groups, Merriam signed the enabling legislation—actually four acts— following a special session of the state legislature in March 1938. A subsequent legal challenge was presented in The Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles v. Isidore B. Dockweiler, wherein a unanimous decision by the California Supreme Court in October 1939 found the enabling legislation to be constitutional in all respects.11 Public Housing in Los Angeles Housing conditions in Los Angeles during the Depression mirrored the social inequalities and unrest that were endemic to other major cities in the United States. Some housing tracts in the city were vacant due to unaffordable rents, yet severe overcrowding and slum conditions existed in other districts. Cardboard shantytowns and “Hoovervilles” sprang up in the dry bed of the Los Angeles River. In 1937, according to writer and critic Esther McCoy, 30 percent of all dwellings in Los Angeles had no inside toilet, 50 percent had no bathtub, and 20 percent were considered unWt for human habitation. A 1938 Work Projects Administration (WPA) housing survey identiWed the multiethnic Eastside and the African American Central Avenue as the worst areas of housing in Los Angeles. Leftist radicals were ready and willing to further the cause of the poorly housed. “Communist direct-action tactics often became the order of the day,” wrote historian Lawrence Leader: “Home guards” and “huskies” reinstated evicted families and provided gas and water services to destitute households.12 The city’s premier agency overseeing housing conditions was the Municipal Housing Commission (MHC), established in 1906. In 1933, Frank Shaw, mayor of Los Angeles from 1933 until his recall in 1938, had appointed a new MHC, which turned to the Housing Division of

The New Day of Decent Housing

19

the PWA in 1934 to develop low-cost housing projects. Three such projects were approved but then abandoned with the curtailment of housing construction when funds were diverted by the PWA for direct relief. Yet Shaw continued to instruct the MHC to participate in federal housing programs, “helping the Commission,” the Los Angeles City Housing Authority (CHA) wrote in 1939, “when it was faced with almost insurmountable difWculties, and encouraging the Commission to maintain its efforts when suffering one disappointment after another.” The MHC had no funds and no budget and, according to Harold Story, Mayor Shaw’s socialist Weld secretary, could do little more than explore, discuss, and hope for the future of municipally assisted housing in Los Angeles.13 The Federation of the High Cost of Living was formed in Los Angeles in 1937 to explore ways to lower the rental costs of housing. A report on the MHC, delivered by that organization’s Walter Alley at a July meeting, sadly noted the MHC’s lack of accomplishments: “The Municipal Housing Commission is in a position where it dare not think of a solution for the miserable housing conditions in Los Angeles.” Addressing the federation, leftist activist Reuben Borough advocated mass rent strikes as a means to counter rent increases. California State Assemblyman Sam Yorty, then a left-wing Democrat, favored federal public housing legislation as “the answer to the problem of house shortage which is sending the rents sky high.”14 Determined to participate with the federal government under the provisions of the 1937 Housing Act, Mayor Shaw asked the City Council in March 1938 to adopt a resolution to establish a Housing Authority. A state commission, appointed by the city, with powers greater than those granted by the City Charter to the MHC, a Housing Authority would allow the city to qualify for federal funding under California enabling legislation. “I deem it important,” the mayor told the city fathers, “that prompt action be taken toward slum clearance and construction of low-rent housing in this city under the provisions for federal aid recently established.” To achieve his goal, Shaw approached the conservatives on the council and Story approached the liberals. The Los Angeles Citizen, the AFL’s weekly newspaper, reported of the June session establishing the CHA that “there was quite a Wght in the council.” The Wnal vote was 8–2 in favor with 5 abstentions. Councilmen Evan Lewis and Earl C. Gay were the two vociferous opponents.15 Mayor Shaw, advised by Story, subsequently named the initial Wve commissioners of the CHA: Ralph A. McMullen, vice president of the

20

The New Day of Decent Housing

AFL Building Trades Council; Nicola Giulii, former MHC commissioner; Helen Mathewson Laughlin, dean of women at UCLA; Charles Crail Jr., attorney; and Joseph A. Hartley, president of the Rotary Club. (Hartley failed to qualify and was replaced by banker John E. Fishburn Jr.) The CHA’s organizational meetings of June 7, 13, and 20, 1938, were devoted to enabling the CHA to transact business and exercise its powers. The City Council loaned the CHA $22,500 for the Wrst year’s operational expenses, covering the salaries of seven positions with a reserve of $3,500. On July 26 began the appointment of the CHA’s technical staff: Charles H. Fennell, executive director, secretary, and treasurer; Walter Wright Alley, technical director; and Barbara Rosien, assistant secretary.16 Giulii, Crail, McMullen, and Fishburn accompanied Shaw on August 1 for the ofWcial greeting of Nathan Straus, USHA administrator, upon his arrival at Santa Fe Station in Los Angeles. Straus informed them that $25 million in federal funds had been earmarked for the city and would be allocated as soon as the CHA presented its plans. “Thousands slept tonight dreaming of the new day promised by the government . . . the new day of decent housing,” the People’s World, the daily paper of the Communist Party on the West Coast, approvingly quoted Straus. On August 18, John T. Long was selected chief clerk of the CHA, and the technical staff became operational. The CHA was initially headquartered in two rent-free rooms at City Hall, but shortly thereafter it occupied an ofWce at the Western PaciWc Building at 1031 South Broadway.17 Mayor Shaw was a Republican and a New Deal supporter whose “interest group liberalism” was, according to historian Thomas Sitton, weighted toward the center of the political spectrum. This put him at odds with liberals, leftists, and conservative moral reformers who, in a coalition of strange political bedfellows, mounted a successful recall election in September 1938. They accused the Shaw administration of being corrupt and graft-ridden. Shaw’s housing policy was castigated by leftists and liberals who, given their antagonism to the mayor, may have understated Shaw’s concern with housing. Social critic Esther McCoy wrote in 1937 that “there are perhaps as many people on the Municipal Housing Commission to block slum clearance as there are ones to further it.”18 Fletcher Bowron, a moderate Republican, was chosen by the recall coalition as mayoral candidate over liberals John Anson Ford and Sam Yorty in order to avoid alienating conservative backers. An advocate

The New Day of Decent Housing

21

of good government, Bowron declared himself a “New Deal Republican” who was in total support of Roosevelt’s national policies. Although public housing and slum clearance were not direct issues in the recall election, “municipal housekeeping” was part of Bowron’s campaign: “The great interest that women are taking in the Shaw recall shows that You and thousands of other women must realize that politics is really housekeeping on a large scale. Politics affects . . . Your housing and health.”19 Unlike former mayor Shaw, who, wrote the CHA, “had been an active proponent of a housing program for the municipality,” Mayor Bowron “was frankly skeptical of the value of this same program.” Within several weeks of his September 16, 1938, election, Bowron sought the resignation of Wve of Shaw’s recent appointees to the MHC. The mayor emphasized that he did not know these people and that he reserved the right to reappoint them in the future, but for the present, he wanted housing experts on the MHC to advise him personally. This point proved moot as the MHC dissolved itself in favor of the CHA. At the beginning of November, Giulii informed the mayor that the CHA commissioners had authorized him (Giulii) to offer their collective or individual resignations. Bowron refused Giulii’s offer. According to Giulii, the mayor stated that “he could not improve on the commission as it is now constituted.”20 Federal Funding and Project Siting The Wrst order of business for the CHA’s technical staff was to demonstrate statistically the need for a public housing project and to use this data to substantiate an application for USHA funding. Lack of adequate and current statistics precluded the formation of a comprehensive plan, but the need for the premier project—initially called Ramona Village—was established utilizing existing data. Ramona Village was to be located at the site of the erstwhile PWA project at Utah Street, but the costs of land acquisition there due to speculation forced the CHA to plan Ramona Village on a nearby vacant site. While attending a meeting of the National Association of Housing OfWcials (NAHO) in Washington, D.C., CHA chairman Giulii applied directly to the USHA, on October 14, for approval of Ramona Village.21 The USHA informed the CHA that its application for a project could be considered, but not approved, without a formal cooperation agreement. A cooperation agreement was a legal contract signifying that the city pledged to assist the CHA by providing municipal services to a

22

The New Day of Decent Housing

project, exempting the development from local taxes, ensuring the equivalent elimination of slum dwellings, and so on. A “blanket” agreement to cover the entire anticipated program would have been the norm, but lacking the adequate housing data to develop a comprehensive plan, “limited” cooperation agreements that approved individual public housing project sites were prepared in Los Angeles. Prospective sites, selected by the CHA, were recommended for City Council approval by the Public Health and Welfare Committee. These sites had to be ratiWed by a majority vote of the council; after the vote, the details of the council’s decision were sent to the city attorney, who would draw up the text of the ordinance for a formal cooperation agreement between the city and the USHA. The ordinance would then be presented to the council, where unanimous approval on the Wrst reading would be required for its adoption. Failing approval on the Wrst reading, the second reading, scheduled one week after the Wrst, required a simple majority for approval. Once the endorsement of the council was obtained, the ordinance required the signature of the mayor.22 The Wrst agreement—for the siting of Ramona Village—was presented to the council on October 20, 1938. In November 1938 Bowron attempted to clarify his position on the city’s public housing program to his weekly radio audience. He afWrmed that USHA administrator Straus had earmarked $25 million for Los Angeles and that these funds would be released pending a cooperation agreement between the USHA, the City Council, and the mayor. But Bowron was doubtful of the feasibility of public housing in the city’s low-density settlement pattern and was wary of the legal and Wnancial obligations of the Wagner Act’s equivalent elimination clause. While the mayor favored “improving housing conditions,” he thought that “we should have a deWnite understanding just where we are going before the city makes a commitment.”23 The Metropolitan Housing Council, a civic organization that advocated public housing, called a December 2 mass meeting in Patriotic Hall. Therein both the city and CHA were requested to give ofWcial accounts of their activities, in order to ascertain the reasons behind “the stalemate in Los Angeles public housing.” Catherine Bauer of the USHA’s research division told the meeting that the city was facing the withdrawal of the $25 million unless the mayor and the council took immediate action. The absent Bowron was “put on the spot,” noted the People’s World, “by lively questions from the audience seeking the

The New Day of Decent Housing

23

answer for the log-jam on the housing issue.” Following this meeting, Mrs. Willita H. Wolf, who identiWed herself as a taxpayer and a voter, wrote to the City Council that if the city fathers were to “make us lose that 25 million from the government for better housing you’ll Wnd yourselves losing your jobs next election.” Van Wolf wrote that the council “had better make up your minds to say ‘Yes’ [to the $25 million] or maybe the voters will say ‘No’ at the next election when you want them to say ‘Yes.’”24 Several days later, claiming he was sitting tight until someone could tell him what the actual cost of the project would be to the city, Bowron refused to urge the adoption of the cooperation agreement. In a December 15 opinion, the city attorney questioned the legality of the cooperation agreement under the City Charter. “It therefore appears that the housing project has met with such legal obstacles,” concluded Bowron on his radio program of December 20, “that its realization is very doubtful in the near future.” Surprisingly, perhaps owing to popular sentiment, the mayor suddenly reversed his course the following month, stating his intention to sign the limited cooperation agreement.25 In order to site projects subsequent to the initial project, Ramona Village, the USHA would require more extensive, precise, and up-todate Wgures to allow the CHA to make speciWc slum-clearance plans and substantiate applications for federal funds. A WPA housing survey, whose purpose was “to make available deWnite and accurate information to be used in solving social and economic problems involved in housing,” would provide the required data. Led by Evan Lewis, the conservative members of the City Council had refused to authorize this proposed survey and referred the matter to the Finance Committee. Upon that committee’s recommendation, the council Wnally permitted the WPA survey on February 15, 1939, in a surprise reversal (and shortly following a People’s World exposé) of Councilman Lewis. The proposed survey would cost the city only $9,700; the balance of $118,000 would be assumed by the federal government. The project lasted from April 1939 through April 1940 and employed 216 people at its inception, which grew to a high point of 494 in October 1939 and fell to 25 at its close.26 The case of Eighth District Councilman Evan Lewis illustrates the political opposition to the city’s public housing program. Christened by liberals and leftists as Councilman “No Slums” Lewis because of his outrageous statement that there were no slums in Los Angeles, Lewis was exposed by People’s World and the slum-clearance committee of

24

The New Day of Decent Housing

the South Side Young Democrats as an absentee landlord collecting “the rent from three of the most dilapidated and uninhabitable shacks of the city.” This fact was counterposed to the councilman’s vehement abhorrence of public housing. Andrew Perebloom opposed Lewis in the April 1939 municipal elections, in which slum clearance and public housing were the foremost issues in this district. Perebloom’s campaign literature featured photographs of Lewis’s slum property. Lewis, reported the People’s World of April 3, “became so enraged by the Perebloom leaXets that he cursed and chased two boys [apparently precinct workers distributing the literature] down the street for two blocks” and had the leaXets conWscated by police.27 Lewis was reelected handily in the April primary, but during the weeks prior to the 1939 municipal elections he developed a more liberal posture on public housing. Following the elections, contemporary political observers foresaw a reform-minded majority in the City Council. Even the remaining conservatives, such as Councilmen Gay and Lewis, as the People’s World noted, “may go along with the new liberal bloc.”28 In the meantime, the cooperation agreement for Ramona Village— now renamed Ramona Gardens—was presented to the council on March 2. Councilmen Franklin P. Buyer and Gay prevented unanimous approval, forcing a second reading of the ordinance on March 9, when it was unanimously approved without discussion. This was in marked contrast to the brouhaha that had erupted when the agreement was initially introduced nearly Wve months earlier. During this period the activities of the CHA were halted, save those that could be performed within the conWnes of the $22,500 budget.29 Even with its newfound liberalism following the 1939 municipal elections, the City Council presented an ambiguous front when it came to the city’s relationship to the federal public housing program. Bowron admitted in May 1939 that Straus, administrator of the USHA, was “nettled” because of the city’s failure to utilize the $25 million of earmarked federal funds. This Wgure had been reduced to $22 million in July when the council refused to petition Congress to enact legislation that would enable further funding for public housing projects (Senate Bill 591 and House Resolution 2888). Lewis, again in Wghting form, termed the multiple-family projects the “most damnable thing in America.” Speaking in favor of public housing, Councilman Carl Rasmussen saw a deWnite alignment on the council between members who had a social conscience and those who hadn’t: “I want to be numbered among

The New Day of Decent Housing

25

those who have.” The following month, the council reversed itself and voted 8–6 to petition Congress.30 Langdon Post, special consultant to the USHA and former president of the New York City Housing Authority, toured the city in June 1939 and declared, “Some of the sections I saw on the East Side make the New York slums look like Buckingham Palace.” His remarks embarrassed Mayor Bowron and the City Council and highlighted city ofWcials’ ambivalence about embracing a public housing program. Particularly incensed were C. C. Smither and Eugene P. Conser, president and secretary-manager, respectively, of the Apartment Association of Los Angeles County, who suggested that Post go back to New York. “Los Angeles slums weren’t bad,” retorted Post in mock apology, “just lousy.” This provided the basis for a debate between Post and Conser on the need for public housing—the Wrst time this subject was publicly debated on the West Coast. The debate took place at the Polytechnic High School auditorium on August 30 and was moderated by County Supervisor John Anson Ford and attended by approximately seven hundred alternately cheering and booing listeners.31 On September 15 the council delayed approval of the program of the CHA, faulting the CHA’s documentation of the city’s slum conditions. “Where there is sunshine and air,” pontiWcated Councilman Lewis, “there are no slums.” Yet following two hours of heated debate on September 27, the council voted 8–7 to assure the USHA that the city would cooperate with the preliminary plans of the CHA, which called for the construction of eleven public housing projects. It was not a blanket approval, for the council retained the power to reject separate sites as they were presented by the CHA. The Property Owners’ Association subsequently accused the council of engaging in a “squandermania” of tax dollars, and the conservative Los Angeles Times of September 30 editorialized that the government had “no business competing in the essentially private Weld of home building.”32 On December 14, the council approved cooperative agreements for the West Los Angeles, Central Avenue, and San Pedro projects by votes of 8–4, 10–2, and 9–3, respectively. Opponents wished to delay voting on the ordinances, a move for which they were rebuked by Councilman Rasmussen. Should the city delay, he argued, the federal government would “get sore at the city of Los Angeles for twiddling and twaddling and take away the money promised.”33 On February 28, 1940, the CHA’s plans encountered a major obstacle when the council turned down the proposed Utah Street (7–5) and

26

The New Day of Decent Housing

Ann Street (8–4) projects and passed a motion (9–3) that the CHA not proceed with the already approved West Los Angeles project. The council’s action “was exactly like slapping Santa Claus in the face,” declared Councilman James Wilson, referring to the precarious federal funding. “It shows the Council’s intention to sabotage the entire lowrent housing program.”34 Charles H. Fennell, executive director of the CHA, wrote the council on April 12 to inform them that since President Roosevelt had already approved a loan contract for the Utah Street project, the council had best get its act together to work out a corresponding cooperation agreement. Councilman Rasmussen vowed to submit the Utah Street proposal for reconsideration, at which time Councilman Lewis roared boisterously that “public housing would wreck the city.” On April 22, the Public Health and Welfare Committee (chaired by Rasmussen) recommended that the ordinance be redrafted by the city attorney, who transmitted the new text to the council on April 29. At the Wrst reading on May 2, the ordinance received a 9–5 vote. At the second reading on May 9, the cooperation agreement was adopted with the same (9–5) vote. The AFL congratulated Rasmussen for “promoting the project back into the graces” of the council. “This is an important victory for progressive forces,” Councilman Parley Parker Christiansen told the People’s World.35 Released by the CHA in April and May 1940, the three-volume WPA housing survey inspected 250,107 dwellings (53 percent of the city’s housing stock) and correlated the data by geographic area, type of structure, year built, housing unit adequacy, race of occupants, number of people per unit, and age of the unit. Of the enumerated housing units, 23.5 percent were found to be substandard by physical standards, occupancy standards, or both. “These substandard units were found so numerous in certain congested areas, that such areas might well be deWned as ‘slums,’” observed the WPA. “They were also located in blighted areas which are rapidly becoming slums.” The CHA’s annual report of that year stated that the survey proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt that the substandard housing conditions are . . . so numerous [not only] in New York and other eastern cities, but also in the single-family homes that predominate in Los Angeles.”36 On August 2, the council voted 6–5 against the cooperation agreements for the Hunter Street and Mercury Avenue projects and sent the Wle back to the city clerk for Wling. On August 20, Councilman Rasmussen made a motion, adopted unanimously, that the ordinances be

The New Day of Decent Housing

27

withdrawn from the City Clerk’s OfWce and referred to the Public Health and Welfare Committee, which, in turn, recommended to the council on October 7 that the ordinances be referred to the city attorney for redrafting. The redrafted ordinances received a favorable 9–4 vote at their Wrst reading on October 23. The second reading of the ordinances, scheduled for October 30, was continued to November 8.37 In August 1940 USHA administrator Nathan Straus had visited Los Angeles with the intention of rescinding federal appropriations, but after meeting representatives of business, labor, church, and civic organizations, he changed his mind. “The news from the Coast is good news,” wrote Straus of his visit. “Today, there is an enthusiastic and widespread endorsement of the program. Opposition has practically vanished. . . . My congratulations to the local housing authorities and citizens’ housing groups for this change in public opinion.” Yet by November 1940 relations between Los Angeles and the USHA had again reached the breaking point, the immediate cause being the failure of the council to approve the Hunter Street and Mercury Avenue projects.38 Langdon Post, the newly appointed director of the western division of the USHA, gave the city a November 15 deadline to utilize the Wnancial allocations and threatened to withdraw $6.8 million of earmarked funds should a cooperation agreement between Los Angeles and the federal government not be forthcoming. He was puzzled by the fact that although Los Angeles had been one of the Wrst cities in the nation to apply for federal money under the 1937 Housing Act, “for some reason [the city didn’t] seem to be able to put the money to work.” Therefore, he said, “No cooperation, no money.”39 As the Los Angeles Daily News, the city’s liberal and Democratic metropolitan daily, noted, “Councilmen have hemmed and hawed over the subject to a point where the federal authorities have already withdrawn $8 million of the original allocation and now threaten to take back another $7 million unless the city shows signs of immediate activity.” With the indecisiveness of the City Council threatening the future of the program, the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing was appointed at a November 4, 1940, conference in Mayor Bowron’s ofWce. Chaired by Roger Johnson, the committee represented, wrote the People’s World, “civic groups, the clergy, organized labor and Negro Associations.” Its purpose was, according to the Daily News, to formulate “battle plans . . . against recalcitrant city councilmen who have consistently voted against the city housing program.” The committee’s

28

The New Day of Decent Housing

immediate task was to urge the council to approve the Mercury Avenue and Hunter Street projects.40 On November 8, the council chambers were Wlled with some 1,500 advocates of public housing, marshaled by Johnson representing the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing, to support cooperation agreements for the Hunter Street and Mercury Avenue projects. Partisans included representatives from the AFL Building Trades Council, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Rubber Workers International, the National Negro Congress, and members of the Citizens’ Housing Council (CHC). Voicing their opposition to the approval were the Los Angeles Realty Board, the Apartment House Owners Association, and Councilmen Lewis and Steven Cunningham. Lewis proclaimed public housing to be a collection of barracks “like those for slaves.” Cunningham expressed a sympathy for better housing, but he felt that the CHA’s equivalent elimination program did not constitute “true” slum clearance. The projects were approved 9–3.41 Meeting on November 14, the council killed hopes of a revitalized relationship with the USHA and, noted the Daily News, “gambled on the extension of tomorrow’s deadline.” A resolution offered by Councilman Rasmussen in favor of spending all the remaining earmarked USHA funds allocated to Los Angeles—$17 million—was defeated 9–4. Three substitute motions—to advise the USHA that the September 27, 1939, cooperation agreement still represented the city’s ofWcial attitude; to forward, without comment, the 1939 agreement to Langdon Post; and to serve notice that the sentiments expressed in 1939 were no longer valid—were likewise voted down. The heated debate was adjourned after two hours, with no action taken to ensure its continuance. “You can kill the program momentarily,” Rasmussen upbraided his colleagues, “but the city will eventually have low cost housing . . . even if it has to have your scalps at the polls.” The Hearst-owned Los Angeles Examiner solemnly considered that the council’s action heralded a possible “death knell of the Federal-Wnanced slum clearance program for Los Angeles.” Nicola Giulii, chairman of the CHA, Xew to San Francisco on November 15 to plead with Langdon Post for an extension of the deadline.42 Delivering a speech entitled “Housing and Democracy” to a luncheon meeting attended by over two hundred CHC members and their guests at the Rosslyn Hotel on November 19, Post announced, “with genuine regret,” the irrevocable withdrawal of $1.25 million of the USHA money. He warned that another $5.25 million of earmarked

The New Day of Decent Housing

29

funds would be reallocated to other California cities unless “the council here changes its mind [and approves a resolution supporting cooperation with the federal program] in the next three weeks—and I don’t mean three years.” The CHC presented a strongly worded resolution to the City Council on that date, urging the approval of additional housing projects so as not to lose the remaining USHA monies.43 On December 12, with about two hundred members of what the People’s World called the “People’s Lobby” of pro–public housing civic groups and trade unions in attendance, the Wadsworth Avenue project was approved by the City Council with an 8–3 vote, while Ann Street went down to defeat with a vote of 7–4 (8 votes were needed for approval). Councilman Harold Harby, concerned over what he regarded as the excessive cost of land acquisitions, cast the decisive “nay” in the Ann Street vote. Roger Johnson and the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing countered Harby’s misinformation with the authentic CHA Wgures. Johnson wrote to Langdon Post: “Councilman Harby, who was opposed to Ann St. on the grounds that the price per acre was too much, is being worked on. He was haywire and I have asked [Charles H.] Fennell [executive director of the CHA] and [Walter W.] Alley [technical director of the CHA] to set him straight.” The following day, Harby moved that the council reconsider the project.44 The cooperation agreement for Ann Street was sent back to the city attorney for redrafting on January 6. The location of the Wadsworth Avenue project was moved, owing to protest by citizens within the vicinity, to a site fourteen blocks to the north—at 103rd Street, as opposed to the original 117th Street—and east of Central Avenue. Now known as the Watts project, an effort to delay action on the ordinance was countered when the CHA’s Walter Alley, according to the Times of January 23, “brought up the dog-eared threat that the United States Housing Authority might withdraw the loan.” On January 22, both Ann Street and the Watts projects were approved by the council, 8–6 and 8–4, respectively.45 In a radio address of February 6, 1941, Mayor Bowron afWrmed his support of these projects speciWcally and of the city’s public housing program in general. He took issue, though, with the appointment of Howard L. Holtzendorff, the twenty-nine-year-old regional counsel and assistant regional director of the USHA’s San Francisco ofWce, to replace the retiring Charles H. Fennell as executive director of the CHA. Because of Holtzendorff’s unfamiliarity with local conditions and inexperience in housing construction and management, Bowron felt that “we should

30

The New Day of Decent Housing

go slow in developing any more projects until we know from experience that they will be constructed and operated on a strictly business basis.” Bowron need not have worried. Holtzendorff proved himself an extremely able administrator, “a wheeler-dealer,” recalled public housing architect Robert Alexander of the CHA’s executive director. “I’m conWdent that his heart was in the right place; at the same time he knew how to make a bureaucracy work.” In March, Holtzendorff applied to the USHA to restore the funds that had been withdrawn the previous November. In spite of his alleged inexperience, he succeeded in recapturing $5 million.46 Council approval of the cooperation agreements for the Manchester project (near Avalon Boulevard and Manchester Avenue) and the new site for the West Los Angeles project were held over from their Wrst reading on March 20, 1941. Despite continued and vociferous protest, the Manchester project (with a vote of 11–3) and the West Los Angeles project (at 10–4) gained Wnal approval on March 27. Also passed was an ordinance establishing the procedure for compliance with the mandate of equivalent elimination. The CHA now had ten projects sanctioned by the city, apparently Wnalizing the program.47 San Vicente Village The West Los Angeles project (named San Vicente Village), a 165-unit project to be located on eight acres near Sepulveda and Santa Monica boulevards, was initially approved on December 14, 1939. On February 28, 1940, Councilman Stephen Cunningham, in whose district San Vicente Village was to be located, introduced a resolution—approved 9–3—requesting the CHA not to proceed with the construction of the project. At an angry session on March 5, the City Council adopted another resolution (9–6) requesting the city attorney to draw up the text for an agreement to rescind the cooperation agreement with the USHA. “The 19 million dollar public housing program has been threatened by some of our weak-kneed councilmen,” trumpeted the Citizen in a clarion call for action. “The attack on this program by the antisocial minded calls for the militant cooperation of every civic-minded person within the conWnes of the city of Los Angeles.” At an assembly hearing in Sacramento regarding San Vicente Village, a Westwoodbased minister testiWed that he was outraged at the thought that blacks from the proposed project might attend the same school as his daughter. Because of this opposition, the CHA commissioners decided, on April 2, to develop an alternative site.48

The New Day of Decent Housing

31

In March 1941, Howard Holtzendorff asked the council to approve the project’s relocation to another West Los Angeles site. During a twohour debate on March 27, Councilman Cunningham mustered about seventy-Wve of his property-owning constituents and argued that public housing would be better located in another district with a higher proportion of slum dwellings. “After all,” Cunningham declared, “these people who are protesting live in the district, pay taxes there and are entitled to some consideration.” Msgr. Thomas O’Dwyer of the CHC responded that he found it inconceivable that homeowners would rather live in substandard housing than in comfortable homes. Despite the dissension, the West Los Angeles project was approved by a vote of 10–4.49 On May 16 the council passed a resolution requesting that the CHA consider changing, once again, the site of the West Los Angeles project. The suggested new location, known as Fickett Hollow, was on the Eastside and was bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Mott, and Soto streets. In a letter of May 20, the CHA’s Holtzendorff agreed to the resolution, Wnding the new site to be “a very satisfactory location.” On June 3 the council approved the cooperation agreement for the Fickett Hollow project, which became the CHA’s tenth and Wnal project. Yet another site change was in order. On July 24 Holtzendorff informed the council that the Fickett Hollow site would be in the path of the proposed Santa Ana Parkway that had been approved by the Planning Commission. He suggested an alternative location—roughly between First, Sixth, Clarence, and Bodie streets and Pecan Terrace—known as the Pecan Street Project. With substandard housing conditions reaching 85 percent, the area was ideal for a slum-clearance project and, as Holtzendorff wrote, had been considered previously as such by the CHA.50 The Final Program The lengthy battles over City Council site approval made it difWcult for the CHA to formulate an integrated or complete plan of public housing construction. A left-liberal assessment by United Progressive News of the 1941 municipal elections found that the support given to the CHA by the council was “barely lukewarm and always tentative.” Hugh Wilkins, county executive of Labor’s Non-Partisan League, claimed that the anti–public housing councilmen would approve sites in their own districts while opposing them in others, thus upholding opposition to the siting process as a whole while maintaining a “clean” image for their poorly housed constituents. The council’s erratic voting and wafXing support of the CHA’s program was directly responsible

32

The New Day of Decent Housing

for the diminishment of the federal funds allocated to Los Angeles. From $25 million (the greatest amount allocated to any city in California) in 1938, the earmarked funds were reduced to $22 million in July 1939, to $17.5 million by July 1940, and to $10 million in the funding crisis of November 1940. After Holtzendorff recaptured some of the funds in March 1941, the Wnal tally was $15 million.51 The CHA’s Wrst annual report of Wscal 1938 contained a general plan that comprised thirteen projects costing $33 million. Included were Ramona Gardens and proposed sites in the neighborhoods of West Los Angeles, Central Avenue, San Pedro, Utah Flats, Watts, Fickett Hollow, Grande Vista, North Main Street, Humboldt, Elysian, and West Temple. In September 1939, the CHA presented a digest of its general plan to the City Council; it consisted of 4,085 units in eleven projects at a estimated cost of $19,513,000. Following a heated two-hour debate, the plan was barely endorsed by the City Council with a vote of 8–7. The second annual report of Wscal 1939 showed a plan of eleven projects with 4,315 units costing $15,809,000.52 Four project extensions never made it past the 1939 agenda, and several of the proposed projects had been dropped due to lack of federal funding. Before the outbreak of World War II ten projects had been planned in Los Angeles, exhausting USHA funds for the city: Ramona Gardens, Pueblo del Rio (Central Avenue), Rancho San Pedro (San Pedro), Aliso Village (Utah Street), William Mead Homes (Ann Street and North Main), Hacienda Village (Watts), Estrada Courts (Hunter Street), Rose Hill Courts (Mercury Avenue), and Avalon Gardens (Manchester Avenue). Pico Gardens (Fickett Hollow and Pecan Street) was scheduled in place of San Vicente Village (West Los Angeles). Three years had elapsed from the foundation of the CHA to the approval of Fickett Hollow. Only Ramona Gardens would be completed and occupied before the war (see Table 1 and Map 1).53 Howard Holtzendorff announced, in October 1941, that workers in defense industries would receive priority placement in the nine as yet incomplete CHA projects. The program would, he said, revert to its original purpose of housing low-income families once the national emergency was over. Featuring Roger Johnson as the master of ceremonies, along with Councilman Parley Parker Christiansen, actress Esther Fernández, Chamber of Commerce president W. W. Goodwin, and Mexican consulate Rodolfo Salazar, groundbreaking for Estrada Courts was held on the same day that Pearl Harbor was attacked— December 7, 1941.54

The New Day of Decent Housing

33

The Proponents of Public Housing The proponents of public housing in Los Angeles included organized labor, civic organizations, religious groups, and mobilized groups within the city’s racial and ethnic communities. They saw the building of a welfare state as an essential component of a desirable future. Developing political expression through the New Deal Democrats, the Communist Party, and their partisans, the leadership of these forces constituted the left-liberal popular front. The Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 had minimal impact on the pursuit of domestic policies like public housing. Though the Communist Party feared the subversion of popular to military goals, it continued a critical support of the program after Public Order 671, which mandated that workers in defense industries would receive priority in public housing for the duration of the national emergency.55 Organized labor was a central proponent of public housing programs. “The building trades unions,” wrote Richard Baisden, “have always considered the Housing Authority to be their own special project.” Mayor Shaw’s appointment of Ralph A. McMullen, vice president of the Building Trades Council, to the Housing Commission and the fact that the CHA, as a matter of policy, employed union labor cemented this relationship. The AFL’s Citizen announced forthcoming siting debates in the City Council and urged AFL members to attend council meetings or to contact their councilman and voice their support of the program. The CIO likewise marshaled public housing advocates. OfWcials from both houses of labor were invited to join the Citizens’ Housing Council and the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing (see below).56 Organized labor often played a leadership role that embraced and directed other public housing proponents. An attempt to place a measure on the May 1939 municipal ballot that would ask voters if the mayor and City Council should continue making appropriations to the CHA was strongly opposed by housing advocates, who sought either a withdrawal or a rewording of the ordinance. The People’s World suggested that an appropriate rewording might ask whether Los Angeles should refuse a $25 million grant from the federal government. On April 6, a council subcommittee heard the ardent opposition to the ballot measure voiced by the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, the CIO, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, the League of Women Shoppers, the Municipal League, and the Workers Alliance. The entire council met on April 10 to hear arguments regarding the ordinance.

Table 1. Public housing projects constructed under the 1937 Ho Map reference

Project name and location

Number of units

Area (acres)

Date completed

1

Ramona Gardens (Ramona Blvd. and Indiana St.)

610

32.0

January 2, 194

2

Pico Gardens (Pecan and Eagle Sts.)

260

14.0

August 1, 1942

3

Pueblo Del Rio (Fifty-Fifth and Long Beach Ave.)

400

17.5

May 15, 1942

4

Rancho San Pedro (Third and Center Sts., San Pedro)

285

12.5

August 15, 194

5

Aliso Village (First St. and Mission Rd.)

802

34.3

December 1, 19

Table 1. (continued) Map reference

Project name and location

Number of units

6

William Mead Homes (North Main and Ann Sts.)

449

7

Estrada Courts (Eighth St., south of Soto)

214

9.73

June 15, 1942

8

Rose Hill Courts (Mercury St. off North Huntington Dr.)

100

5.23

June 1, 1942

9

Avalon Gardens (Eighty-Eighth Pl. and Avalon Blvd.)

164

14.9

May 12, 1942

Hacienda Village (104th St. and Compton Ave.)

184

17.63

May 15, 1942

10

Area (acres)

15.2

Date completed

October 1, 194

Map 1. Location of public housing projects constructed under the 1937 Housing Act. Numbers correspond to the projects listed in Table 1.

The New Day of Decent Housing

37

About three hundred representatives of the AFL, the CIO, and religious, civic, and business organizations were led by J. W. Buzell of the Central Labor Council, C. J. Haggerty of the State Federation of Labor, and John Christian of the Building Trades Council. The City Council voted 10–5 to take the matter off the ballot. “And thus,” trumpeted the Citizen, “AFL Organized Labor won another victory in behalf of right and justice.”57 Msgr. Thomas J. O’Dwyer, a central proponent of public housing, was the director of hospitals and charities for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. O’Dwyer had a gift for coalition building, uniting Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and persons of color into a formidable force in municipal politics. O’Dwyer’s promotion of housing reform had initially been exhibited in his petitioning of both Mayor Shaw and Governor Merriam to take advantage of the 1937 Housing Act. With O’Dwyer as second vice president, the Metropolitan Housing Council was organized in October 1938 in order to pressure the City Council to adopt the cooperation agreement for Ramona Village. Other ofWcers included Harry G. Balter, Eugene Lewis Wilson, Paul Williams, Robert H. Parker, Assemblyman Augustus Hawkins, Councilman G. Vernon Bennett, and Sigfried Goetze.58 In March 1940, the CHC was formally founded as a privately funded public interest group to promote adequate housing, both private and public, for all income groups in Los Angeles. It was initiated by public housing activist (and future planning historian) Mel Scott and chaired by Monsignor O’Dwyer. “The Council is composed of business men, educators, attorneys, architects, doctors, social workers, clergymen, housewives, labor leaders, public ofWcials—a cross-section of the community,” Scott wrote to County Supervisor John Anson Ford. “We think you will want to join other informed, public-spirited citizens in a concerted effort to bring about the eradication of undesirable dwellings and the creation of a new environment for those now obliged to live in such dwellings [and] . . . to replace poor housing with good modern homes.” At the core of the CHC were Scott; O’Dwyer; C. J. Haggerty, executive secretary of the AFL Building Trades Council; architects Eugene Weston and Reginald Johnson; and housing reformer Frank Wilkinson. The CHA saw the CHC as a valuable political ally with whom the CHA “has worked and will continue to work very closely.”59 Frank Wilkinson, who intended to become a Methodist minister, had come to the CHC after a college graduation trip to major cities in

38

The New Day of Decent Housing

the eastern United States, Europe, Northern Africa, and the Holy Land. He passionately spoke to the CHC chairman, Monsignor O’Dwyer, of the horrendous slum conditions he had witnessed in the course of his travels, and he was somewhat taken aback when O’Dwyer kindly and paternally replied: “My son, you did not need to go so far to get so excited.” He then gave Wilkinson an eye-opening tour of slums on the Eastside, Central Avenue, and Watts. Having come from the Westside— he was a graduate of Beverly Hills High School and UCLA—Wilkinson was shocked by the housing conditions of the other Los Angeles, which he found to be, in many respects, comparable to the slums he had visited on other continents. O’Dwyer hired Wilkinson to be secretary of the CHC for Wfteen dollars a week.60 Roger C. Johnson, formerly a liberal columnist with the Hollywood Citizen-News, a cofounder of the CIO’s Los Angeles Newspaper Guild, and a political activist in the recall of Mayor Frank Shaw, was initially uninformed as to the goals of the public housing program in Los Angeles. At the urging of his friend Mel Scott, he found himself attending a meeting at the beginning of November 1940 in Mayor Bowron’s ofWce on how to force the City Council to proceed with project site approvals and to cooperate with the USHA. He made a brief speech in which he stated that though he might be ignorant of the speciWc difWculties faced by the city’s program, he felt that public housing advocates needed to exert political pressure on the council. When it was decided that a committee should be formed to address this problem, Mayor Bowron leaned over to whisper something to Nicola Giulii, who then nominated Johnson, much to his surprise, as chairman.61 Named on Johnson’s suggestion as the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing (and subsequently as the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing and Planning), the group’s membership was composed of C. J. Haggerty, president of the California AFL; Dr. Willsie Martin, pastor of the Wilshire Boulevard Methodist Church; Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple; Phil Connelly, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles CIO Council; attorney (and future California social critic) Carey McWilliams; and Monsignor O’Dwyer. The organization would direct political pressure at City Council hearings as well as from within council districts for the proposed public housing locations. Johnson would take opposing councilmen individually to the selected sites to convince them of the extent of slum clearance that accompanied each project.62 From the inception of the CHA, African Americans mobilized in

The New Day of Decent Housing

39

support of public housing. A conference on housing in the Central Avenue district was called by the Los Angeles chapter of the United Negro Congress on July 15, 1938. Addressed by State Assemblyman Augustus Hawkins, the conference sought to unite concerned groups in securing a project for the district. Delegates from twenty-six organizations—including the Housewives League, the Liberal Democratic Club, the Communist Party, the Jefferson High PTA, union locals, and numerous civic and religious groups—attended the meeting. In June 1939 Mayor Bowron appointed Mrs. Jessie Terry, an African American woman and member of the county Democratic Committee (as well as a political ally in the Shaw recall), as housing commissioner to Wll the expired term of Helen Laughlin. This appointment was seen as a move to consolidate and extend the mayor’s political coalition. According to the People’s World of June 22, the appointment served to “strengthen the cordial relations between the city’s large Negro population and the Bowron regime.”63 Subsequently, in August 1939, the National Negro Congress sponsored a mass rally at the Hamilton Methodist Church on East Eighteenth Street with the theme “What a housing project would mean for your community.” The purpose of the meeting, according to the People’s World of August 3, was to “arouse popular support for a housing project in the Central Avenue district.” Chaired by Mrs. Fay Allen, speakers included John P. Davis, national secretary of the National Negro Congress; Mrs. Jessie Terry; Assemblyman Augustus Hawkins; Councilman G. Vernon Bennett; and, conveying greetings from Mayor Bowron, the socialist Public Works Commissioner Reuben Borough. Following the October 1939 announcement that the CHA was in the process of site negotiations in the Central Avenue district, Mrs. Terry declared that the proposed public housing project would “make our people aware of the necessity of Wghting for better housing and of campaigning for it. It is only the awakening demand of the colored people for better housing that has made this proposed project possible and as long as we have the New Deal with us we can expect a continuation of such a [public housing] program.”64 El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española (initially El Congreso Mexicano e Hispano Americano) was an organization that aggressively sought to defend and extend the social and civil rights of Spanishspeaking people in the United States. As part of a campaign to obtain better housing conditions on behalf of the Spanish-speaking in Southern California, Ramón Welch, provisional general secretary of El Congreso,

40

The New Day of Decent Housing

wrote to the Los Angeles City Council in January 1939 of “the desperate need for a housing program for the various sub-standard districts in this community.” Linking poor housing to issues of public health, vice, and crime, El Congreso urged the council to pursue the federal funding for a public housing program.65 The Spanish-language press sympathetically covered the construction of Ramona Gardens from its initial planning in 1939 through its groundbreaking in March 1940 to its inauguration in February 1941. The partially completed project was visited by more than 10,000 people, indicating the high level of popular interest in the modern dwellings of the public housing program that were, praised the newspaper La Opinión, pleasant, secure, and healthy. The Aliso Village project, scheduled with the completion of the WPA survey in 1940, likewise received favorable coverage. A citizens’ committee from El Salvador Church directed by Rev. Kendrick Watson (with young volunteer and Chicano activist Bert Corona) conducted door-to-door housing surveys in order to assist the siting of Aliso Village.66 Life in Ramona Gardens Constructed on a vacant thirty-two-acre site, Ramona Gardens was the premier project of the CHA. Its 610 dwelling units were contained in 112 two-story structures. “The monotony of the large group of structures,” wrote the Southwest Builder and Contractor, “has been relieved by painting the exterior walls in soft, warm colors in varied combinations . . . giv[ing] the whole project a cheerful aspect.” The project’s sloping site was divided into four superblocks, connected by curving streets and pedestrian paths. “Every effort has been made,” wrote Ramona Gardens architect Eugene Weston Jr., “to reduce public streets and increase the number of walks and play areas that are distinctly separated from the hazards of automobile trafWc.”67 On January 2, 1941, Ramona Garden’s initial tenants—six families—moved into their new homes. The Wrst family was that of Mr. Morris and Mrs. Marie Foxman, their children Allen and Loretta, and Mrs. Foxman’s mother, Mrs. Rose Goldberg. The Foxmans had come from a four-room house with a back-porch toilet and no bath, for which they had paid eighteen dollars a month, excluding utilities. The family’s new accommodations consisted of a three-bedroom house with a private bath and toilet, a radiator, a refrigerator, and cooking range. Rent was Wfteen dollars a month, including gas, electricity, and water.

The New Day of Decent Housing

41

The second family in Ramona Gardens consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Valencia and their year-old son Freddie. The Valencias had formerly occupied one room of a partitioned house. CHA Commissioner Ralph McMullen ofWcially greeted the new residents and explained the three simple rules for tenants in Ramona Gardens: Pay your rent, do not disturb your neighbors, and take proper care of the house, yard, and equipment.68 Ramona Gardens was formally dedicated on February 23, 1941; 1,500 people attended the inaugural ceremonies and were addressed by California’s governor, Culbert Olson, Democratic national committeewoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, Sheriff Eugene Biscaluz, CHC president Msgr. Thomas O’Dwyer, housing commission president Nicola Giulii, and councilmen Parley Parker Christiansen, Harold Harby, Roy Hampton, Ed Thrasher, and Carl Rasmussen. The civic beneWts of public housing were seen as extending to the surrounding neighborhood, demonstrating the viability of social living and planning in the building

Figure 3. Ramona Gardens, the premier public housing project in Los Angeles. (Security Pacific Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)

42

The New Day of Decent Housing

of a democratic city, where hierarchy would be abolished. The Daily News wrote in its extensive coverage of the dedication: In a democracy there is no room for classes. The management [of Ramona Gardens] realizes this and will do all it can to make certain no artiWcial distinctions are established or permitted to get a foothold. In other words, visitors will always be welcome.69

The CHA actively sought to realize the physical framework for a cooperative and democratic social life in the new community. In the preface to the text of its Handbook for the residents of Ramona Gardens, the CHA approvingly quoted a passage from The Challenge of Housing in which Langdon Post asserted that the “community is as important to the home as is the actual life within it.” Tenants would Wnd space available for a nursery school, a community kitchen, and a social or club room in the Administration Building. For public, open activities, there was no charge for the use of this social space.70 Clubs based on shared interests were encouraged. The Ramona Gardens Mothers’ Club, enthused the CHA, “members of which earnestly sought knowledge to guide them in the care and training of their children,” gave way to a Community Club as “observing the enthusiasm of the mother members of the club, the men soon entered into organizational activities themselves.” Resulting from the active lobbying of the Community Club, the Twenty-fourth Well-Baby Conference in Los Angeles, offering prescriptive and preventative health care for toddlers and infants, was opened in the project. Ramona also boasted Youth Clubs, a Young Married Couples Club, English Classes, adult education, a woodworking shop, and other groups. “Living in Ramona Gardens has become more than merely occupying dwelling units,” the 1941 annual report of the CHA stated with satisfaction. The residents “showed evidences of a desire for a common goal—that of the fullest utilization of their new accommodations, a widening interest in current affairs, and a desire for self expression.”71 Yet Ramona Gardens was not an ideal community for everyone. Young adults complained that recreational facilities in the project were restricted to adolescents and children. There were no movie houses within walking distance. In order to protect their homes from the malicious mischief of the “Murchison street gang,” tenants were forced to form committees of guards and watches. “This place is like a barracks,” claimed one tenant, “although the house is nicer than the dump we used to live in.” Writing in People’s World, Noel Cobb saw a contradiction

The New Day of Decent Housing

43

between improved housing standards (which the CHA had provided) and precepts of community life (which the tenants would have to address): “They do not wish to live in ‘houses’—the families want ‘homes.’”72 Conclusion The 1937 Public Housing Act reXected the conditions of Depressiontorn America—unemployment, unhealthy living conditions, poor housing at high cost, and the imminence of expanding slums. The federal public housing program both responded to the social unrest generated by these conditions and was actively pursued as a popular demand by the left-liberal popular front. Moreover, the demand for public housing was differentiated as the program’s proponents—organized labor, the unemployed, minorities, women—had different needs and different visions of a new life in the public housing projects. Emerging from the Depression, the left-liberal popular front perceived the public housing program as the foundation for the modern city and a cornerstone in the making of a better world. “In a public housing project,” according to Langdon Post, “the walls, the Xoors and the ceilings do not constitute the whole job. Playgrounds, air and sunshine, neighborhood improvement and the removal of slums and blight, all are . . . conferred upon the community.” The projects were to be, according to the USHA, “a nucleus of regeneration around which a neighborhood rebuilds itself,” replacing the “entrenched chaos” of the slums with the “entrenched order” of public housing and providing the framework of a new social life in a democratic community.73

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CHAPTER 2

Homes for Heroes: Public Housing during World War II

uring World War II, federal Wnancial assistance to Los Angeles and other cities was increased from Depression levels of spending. Federal funding for housing stimulated planning as a means to address the economic, social, and physical problems of the wartime municipality as well as to direct postwar urban development. With the transformation of President Roosevelt from “Dr. New Deal” to “Dr. Win the War,” the politics of the public housing program incorporated a single objective yet contradictory goals. It was recognized across the political spectrum that the public housing program was vital to the productivity of defense workers and the promotion of the war effort. The conservative Times, for example, ran a special multipage supplement to congratulate the CHA on its public war housing program with the opening of Aliso Village.1 Though the left-liberal popular front recognized that the public housing program was essential to the nation’s mobilization for war, it also viewed the program as a means to consolidate and extend the humanitarian social welfare policies of the New Deal. The cooperative social life within the public housing projects, enforced by a shared wartime sacriWce, was to provide a template for the postwar reconstruction of U.S. cities. In the hands of the left-liberal popular front, wartime communityoriented programs like public housing could, wrote Philip Funigiello, “become the building blocks of the new community spirit that was to revitalize urban America.”2

D

45

46

Homes for Heroes

In Los Angeles, aircraft orders from war-torn Europe and the growth of the shipbuilding industry had generated a booming defense economy in the city by the end of 1940. The city was inundated by aspiring war workers and their families, and its overall population increased 20 percent between 1940 and January 1946. According to Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron, these war workers were heroes for whom the city was engaged in the production of democratic housing: With the patriotic emotionalism that is manifested during wartime, the man in uniform is properly accepted as the greatest hero. But we have heroes right here at home among those who drive the rivets, heroes who perform their important service towards winning a mechanized war, not amid the shot and shell, but amid the clattering of hammers. We are proud to provide sound American homes for these production line heroes. It may be truthfully said that right here in Los Angeles, amid comparatively peaceful surroundings, we are Wghting the most important engagement of the war of survival—the worldwide battle for the preservation of democracy—and we are doing it in a democratic way.3

The “patriotic emotionalism” of which Bowron spoke was not only a statement of wartime ideology but was also a very real expression of the social justice that had been envisioned in the New Deal. A liberal newspaper serving the multiethnic Eastside neighborhoods reported on Frank Garcia, an Aliso Village public housing project resident, who joined the navy because “the money and power crazy Tojo and Hitler made him mad as heck.” Stationed in the South PaciWc, Garcia was Wghting so that “other Eastside boys, Jewish, Negro, Russian, Armenian . . . [could go on] living together in the good old democratic way.” This was more than propaganda. Fascism abroad and authoritarianism at home were seen as the same enemy: Now, don’t think that Frankie forgot that some of the Eastside cops pushed him and other boys around, or tried to teach them democracy with a swinging club—if you can call that democracy. He didn’t forget that. But he overlooked it for [the] more important job to keep true American democracy alive, democracy that would give the kids on the Eastside, and all the American kids, a fair chance. He knew that if we win the war, that club swinging stuff would go with the wind.

Wounded in the South PaciWc, Garcia returned to Aliso Village with a medical discharge.

Homes for Heroes

47

But was that enough for Frankie? Heck, no. He no sooner gets back to Aliso Village than he re-joins the Sparta Club [the Aliso Village youth group], from which twenty members have already entered the Armed Forces[, and] he immediately goes to work in a defense plant. Can you beat a guy like that? 4

The CHA during the War On the federal level, the public housing program was preparing to function as an integral part of the war effort even before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In June 1940, the 1937 Housing Act had been amended to exempt workers in defense industries from the low-income eligibility requirements for public housing, and the Community Facilities Act (popularly known as the Lanham Act) of October 1940 allocated 700,000 units of public housing, under the jurisdiction of the Federal Works Agency, for defense workers. Since July 1940 the National Defense Advisory Commission had sought to manage the myriad federal programs dealing with both public and private housing within the context of a national defense housing policy. In February 1942 an executive order consolidated sixteen agencies, including the USHA, into a single National Housing Agency (NHA). One of the NHA’s three main divisions, the Federal Public Housing Authority (FPHA), oversaw the permanent and temporary public war housing of the Lanham Act.5 The wartime objectives of the CHA were twofold: to put all the efforts and resources of the agency into the housing of essential war workers, and to cooperate with the federal government in supervising the construction or management of public war housing. The CHA converted nine of its ten original projects to defense housing. Financed by the federal government and managed by the CHA were Wve permanent and twenty-one temporary public war housing projects (see Tables 2 and 3 and Map 2).6 Within the practical limits imposed by subordination to the national war effort, the CHA outlined the role of public housing in a better postwar world. Its 1942 annual report recalled the housing shortage that occurred in the wake of World War I and the discharged veterans who could not be absorbed by the economic system. The CHA vowed vigilance to avoid a repetition of that history. A vigorous and coordinated construction program, embracing both public and private housing, would be a socially conscious means of converting the wartime economy to a peacetime one. Furthermore, the existing public housing projects provided a viable blueprint for the postwar future. “Anticipating the

Table 2. Permanent public war housing projects managed by the CHA Map reference

Project name and location

1

Normont Terrace (990 West 256th St.) Dana Strand Village (Wilmington Ave. and C St.) Portsmouth Homes and Annex (2323 Portsmouth Rd.) Wilmington Hall Cottages (435 Neptune) Channel Heights (Western Ave. and TwentyFifth St.)

2

3

4

5

Number of units

Area (acres)

Architects

400

37.6

Winston Risley and Stanley Gould

384

21.17

George J. Adams and Graham Latta

128

22.2

Unknown

26

2.42

600

149.65

Unknown

Richard Neutra

Table 3. Temporary public war housing projects managed by the CHA Map reference

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

Project name and location

Pacific Park (901 Rio Vista) Park Annex 2 (2059 Perlita Ave.) Estrada Courts Annex 1 (3300 Glenn Ave.) Estrada Courts Annex 2 (1280 Rio Vista) Corregidor Park (1700 East Forty-Eighth Pl.) Corregidor Park Annex 1 (1700 East FortyEighth Pl.) Corregidor Park Annex 2 (4066 South Compton) Corregidor Park Annex 3 (2743 Dixiana Circle)

Number of units

200 24 100

Type

Trailers Trailers (directly operated by the FPHA) Portable shelter units

60

Portable shelter units

110

Portable shelter units

44

Portable shelter units

44

Portable shelter units

120

Portable shelter units

Table 3. (continued) Map reference

Project name and location

14

Pueblo del Rio Annex (5525 Long Beach Ave.) Jordan Downs (2151 Century Blvd.) Imperial Courts (2200 East 114th St.) Imperial Courts Annex (112th and Mona) Imperial Courts Annex (1256 East 109th St.) Imperial Courts Annex (2200 East 114th St.) Lumina Park (20210 South Western Ave.) Lumina Park Annex (20210 South Western Ave.) Banning Homes (801 Cabinet Dr.) Wilmington Hall (Cal 4109 and 4301; 435 Neptune) Dana Strand Annex (401 Hawaiian Ave.) Bataan Park (1601 Fries Ave.) Western Terrace (1655 Seaport Dr.)

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

Number of units

88

Type

40

Temporary dwelling units Temporary dwelling units Temporary dwelling units Portable shelter units

80

Portable shelter units

22

Portable shelter units

75

Trailers

50

Trailers

512 100

2,000

War apartments

2,126

Dormitories

260

Portable shelter units

240

Portable shelter units

998

Portable family dwellings

Source: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Preliminary Report on the Disposition of Public War Housing in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, September 27, 1945.

Map 2. Location of public war housing projects managed by the CHA. Numbers correspond to the projects listed in Tables 2 and 3.

Homes for Heroes

51

need for planned communities following the war, the Housing Authority has built [Channel Heights, Normont Terrace, Dana Strand Village, Wilmington Hall, and Banning Homes] so they can be salvaged. The same facilities, landscaping and streets can be used in the future as well as now.”7 The CHA’s spirit of reform was a product of the left-liberal popular front, which was forming a bloc within the authority’s management. These reformers included Roger Johnson, Frank Wilkinson, Drayton Bryant, Sidney Green, and Oliver Haskell. They shared a commitment to tenant democracy, integration, and community empowerment. Roger Johnson became manager of Ramona Gardens in 1941, and during the war he assumed managerial duties at Aliso Village. “Ever since Aliso Village was opened for occupancy,” wrote Joseph Weckler, the head of a project sponsored by the American Council on Race Relations, “it has had a strong management which has encouraged democratic organization of the tenants and has met problems of inter-group relations with the principle that all tenants are entitled to equal privileges and that this consideration is foremost in the ironing out of difWculties.” In Weckler’s appraisal, Aliso Village was “perhaps the most successful example of inter-group public housing in Los Angeles.”8 With Leo D. Varela, playground director of the Utah Street Elementary School, Johnson sought to facilitate the organization of a Tenants’ Council at Aliso Village that would elect its own representatives and then approach the management to voice tenants’ concerns. “The result of this progressive leadership from management and from among tenants themselves is evident,” continued Weckler. “The tenants have formed their own council consisting of democratically elected members from all parts of the project. This council is operated independently of management and takes action on all kinds of community problems.” The 1945 evaluation by Raymond Nelson of Roger Johnson as Aliso Village manager is indicative of the high level of community involvement: Community activities are numerous. . . . The manager is active in, and cooperates with, other neighborhood and city-wide agencies and organizations engaged in community educational, recreational and welfare work. His community relations with outside agencies and organizations whose services are helpful; and his knowledge of other available community resources, have proven beneWcial to Aliso and neighboring residents as well as Aliso management.9

52

Homes for Heroes

As secretary of the CHC, Frank Wilkinson was an organizer of a 1942 protest of the decision to restrict the newly constructed Hacienda Village project to white occupants only. The CHC acceded to the demands for integration within a matter of days, and Wilkinson was hired as the manager of Hacienda Village when a public relations ofWcial of the AFL and the CHA walked up to him and asked: “If you like the niggers so much, Frank, how would you like to manage the project yourself?”10 Wilkinson was manager of Ramona Gardens in December 1944 when, while attending the annual conference of Region VI of the NAHO, which was being held in segregated accommodations in Las Vegas, he made a motion that all future Region VI NAHO activities be held in nondiscriminatory facilities. Returning to Los Angeles, he was put on probation by Howard Holtzendorff for “emotional instability.” Enraged at what he viewed as the usurpation of his authority, Holtzendorff confronted Wilkinson: “What were you trying to do to me in Las Vegas? . . . Do you want to be director?” Recognizing that Wilkinson was a principled and committed reformer who would best be kept close at hand, Holtzendorff appointed Wilkinson as his special assistant in 1945.11 Drayton Bryant had worked as an economist for California’s State Relief Administration, for Standard Oil, and for various unions. Being unemployed in October 1940, he was hired by the CHA as an eligibility interviewer. He became an assistant manager and then the acting manager of Ramona Gardens. During the war he managed Hacienda Village, Avalon Gardens, Dana Strand Village, Normont Terrace, and Channel Heights. Bryant was impressed that the CHA had “the Wrst residents’ councils [in the country] as a matter of policy helping the tenants develop a democratic self-government.” He saw his role as one of “helping to build a community” and not as that of a “Great White Father” to the tenants.12 During the war, Sidney Green became manager of Dana Strand Village and then moved on to William Mead Homes. Oftentimes, he recounted, tenants at various projects would form their own councils and then approach the management. Managers saw to it that the councils were not inhibited by basic problems (for instance, lack of a place to meet, difWculties sending out bulletins), as “any manager worth his salt could see that a tenant group was useful in making a community out of a bunch of apartments.”13 With a background in labor and community organizing, Oliver

Homes for Heroes

53

Haskell had found in reading Langdon Post’s The Challenge of Housing that “the angels sang.” Making contact with the CHA through his friend Phil Connelly, the CIO’s secretary-treasurer, Haskell interviewed and tested for a variety of positions with the CHA. Despite the support of councilmen Parley Parker Christiansen and Carl Rasmussen, Haskell was considered too “ultra-liberal” for the CHA. While he was working in the shipyards in San Pedro as a shipWtter’s helper and living at Banning Homes, the CHA Wnally hired him as the assistant manager in charge of health, recreation, and welfare at Wilmington Hall.14 The Organization of Everyday Life In August 1942 the Koseki family, one-time residents of the Ramona Gardens project and then living in Rivers, Arizona, as defense workers, wrote to their friends in the management ofWces of their former home that there was “no place like Ramona Garden[s], it was [a] Garden of Eden.” Such an attitude was neither exceptional nor surprising; it was an expression of tenants who had discovered a basis for activism in the expansion of the public housing program. In 1951 In the City Was a Garden, a chronicle of daily life in the Channel Heights project (referred to as “Garden City”), was published. Written by Henry Kraus, a tenant at Channel Heights and a defense worker in the San Pedro shipyards, the book demonstrated the extent to which public housing was an experience in democratic self-management. Tenant organization “Xowed out of the very spirit of social cooperation,” Kraus wrote, “that for us constituted the essence of the New Deal.”15 Henry Kraus recalled that when he arrived at Channel Heights as a tenant in 1942, there was very little community organization in the project beyond sharing a washing machine. Tenant democracy blossomed as the residents’ council sponsored a monthly town hall discussion, dances, movies, and a consumer cooperative. “We’re trying to make our project a better community,” said residents’ council president Mrs. Virginia Lindsey. By the end of the war, the tenants had mobilized around issues of health, education, politics, housework, and racism so that, Kraus recalled, “the [tenant] council regarded its powers so highly that there was hardly anything its members did not deem could be accomplished with: ‘Let’s send them a wire!’ or ‘Let’s circulate a petition.’”16 When he assumed managerial duties at Ramona Gardens and Aliso Village, Roger Johnson found buildings and rooms allocated for nurseries but no equipment or personnel. Nurseries were Wrst initiated at

54

Homes for Heroes

Ramona Gardens in October 1941 by the Ramona Community Club, the women’s auxiliary of the AFL Molders’ and Foundry Workers’ Union, and Las Floritas, a women’s community organization. By the end of 1943 all the housing projects had functioning nurseries on their premises. The CHA publicized its nurseries as the “care for youngsters while their mothers, dressed in shirts and dungarees, went out to weld, rivet and assemble war machines.” Burdened by the double duty of domestic chores as well as the work of a “Rosie the Riveter,” housewives in the projects provided the greatest impetus to the founding of nurseries. Nurseries at Channel Heights were organized through the residents’ council, despite the fact that the PTA had “condemned nurseries as communistic.” Iona Lish, a tenant at Ramona Gardens, praised the project’s nursery and was convinced that her children were “receiving excellent supervision and progressive child-training at the Extended Day Care School.”17 Conservatives, liberals, and the Left agreed on the necessity of nurseries and day care for the successful promotion of the war effort. “We have lost planes, and we will lose planes,” complained Capt. Arthur Krimm of an army commission on manpower problems, “for lack of childcare in this area [Los Angeles].” “Women can’t make airplanes,” agreed the People’s World, “with babies strapped to their backs or with children tied to their apron strings.” “Under peace conditions nursery schools are vital in training pre-school children and helping sick mothers,” noted the CHA. “Under war conditions they help assure victory by letting parents—both mothers and fathers—work in war industries free from worry about their offspring.”18 The left-liberal popular front’s emphasis on community within the public housing projects remained a deWning component of the program with the switch from low-income housing to that of housing defense workers. Like the tenants’ handbook for Ramona Gardens, the Handbook of Information and Suggestions for the Residents of Pueblo del Rio was prefaced by Langdon Post’s quotation on the importance of seeing housing within the context of community life. The tenants were told, “You will Wnd that considerable space has been provided for community and social activities and sports. These facilities are open to you and to the public.” Furthermore, “as you get acquainted with your neighbors you will probably Wnd many mutual interests and common problems. You may wish to form clubs or other groups, as residents of other housing developments have done.” At the dedication of Pueblo del Rio in June 1942, the chairwoman of the neighborhood

Homes for Heroes

55

council that had assisted the CHA in planning the project explained to an audience of 1,500 people that Pueblo del Rio would not be a “cultural island” but, rather, would be accessible “to persons in the community as well as to the residents of the development.”19 Doctors from San Pedro cited constraints on time and availability and routinely refused to make house calls in the harbor projects. But residents suffered epidemics of mumps, measles, and Xu during the winter of 1943–44 as well as a plethora of colds that resulted from the out-of-doors work in the shipyards, so a limited form of socialized medicine was vital for the health of war workers and thus to war production. In an agreement with the CHA in early 1944, the California Physicians’ Service (CPS) volunteered to provide health care for project tenants for a Xat monthly fee of $2.50 per person, $4.00 per couple, or $5.00 per family in the Banning Homes and Channel Heights projects. At their conference in May 1944, the California Medical Association viewed CPS “as a substitute to ‘wean’ the public away from federal medicine,” according to the People’s World of May 5. CPS was not only prescriptive but preventative as well, dispersing information on diet and personal hygiene.20 Initially instituted in Ramona Gardens prior to the war, the WellBaby Plan was expanded to all the city’s public housing projects. Coordinated with the Los Angeles Health Department, the program provided free medical exams for children under two years of age. Though located in the projects, this service was available to both public housing tenants and people in the surrounding area. A CPS doctor and tenant of Channel Heights, Wilbur Gordon, recalled that “I could deal with sick babies, but well babies bored the hell out of me. However, I never doubted the value of the work I was doing.”21 The Changing Racial Composition of the City The migration of workers into Los Angeles during the war posed a tremendous challenge to the existing pattern of residential segregation. Large numbers of southern whites, African Americans, and Mexican Americans were recruited to work in the defense industries of the city. Racial tensions in public housing projects, in the factories, and in the city were extremely volatile. J. Alexander Somerville, a reader of the left-leaning and black-owned California Eagle, commented on “the gradual disintegration of the cordial and harmonious relationship that has existed between the races in this city.” The mobilization of the leftliberal popular front to utilize public housing to confront the social

56

Homes for Heroes

and spatial inequality of Los Angeles and of public housing tenants to address the racism in their daily lives illustrates the visions for a better world that were being forged in the public housing projects.22 Public housing for the multiracial workforce in the defense industries was a means to promote a democratic city of “Americans all” united in the struggle against fascism. Under the impetus of union activist Bert Corona, the CIO formed a “Mexican Committee” in 1942 to pressure local governments into providing housing for Mexican American workers. A resolution was introduced in the Los Angeles CIO Council to permit “allied and friendly aliens” to occupy the public housing projects. El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española also called for foreign nationals whose children were U.S. citizens to be eligible for public housing. In an August 1942 meeting at the CHA ofWces, Mexican families were granted permission to occupy the city’s projects provided that at least one of the children was a U.S. citizen and that someone in the family was employed as a defense worker.23 Although the total population of Los Angeles increased 20 percent between 1940 and 1946, the African American population increased 108.7 percent in the same period. In absolute terms, the size of the black population had nearly doubled in the city, from 67,000 in 1940 to 125,000 in 1945. Restricted by racial covenants and other means of discrimination to living in approximately 5 percent of the area of the city, African American families faced an extremely limited housing market. Hot-bedding (the continued use of a bed by succeeding shifts of workers), sleeping in Union Station or in “Xea-hop” movie houses, or living in curtain-partitioned hallways awaited the black in-migrant to Los Angeles. “It was pathetic,” wrote Charlotta Bass, publisher of the California Eagle. “Negro families who came to work in the war industries were forced to live in old garages, broken-down store-fronts, deserted railroad coaches, thatched tents—all without sanitary conveniences.”24 As a consequence of Executive Order 9066 in 1942, Japanese Americans were forced to abandon their homes and businesses in Little Tokyo to be relocated in concentration camps for the duration of the war with Japan. Little Tokyo, whose picturesque stores and inexpensive hotels and boarding houses were formerly home to 7,500 Nisei and Issei, became a ghost town. By mid-1943, the inXux of war workers had repopulated the district to such an extent that the Los Angeles County War Council called for augmented recreational, health, and police services to the area. By 1944, the 30,000 African Americans who Xooded into the district earned it the nickname of “Bronzeville.”25

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57

The City Council addressed the overburdening of the city’s sanitation services in Bronzeville. In May and June 1944, the city’s health department issued 150 eviction notices in an attempt to alleviate some of the most deplorable cases of poor sanitation and overcrowding. With the timely completion of the Jordan Downs public war housing project in Watts, three hundred of those units were offered to the Bronzeville evictees. The condition of Bronzeville highlighted for the left-liberal popular front the fact that modern housing was impossible within a segregated city.26 Mayor Bowron called a conference in his ofWce in August 1943 to discuss the housing situation for minorities. He appointed a committee of three African American community leaders—Norman Houston, Floyd Covington, and Judge Edwin L. Jefferson—to advise him on city policy. Howard Holtzendorff pointed out that the NHA refused to rent private war housing to African Americans in racially restricted areas. He blasted the NHA for ignoring the needs of minorities—dealing with “peanuts” instead of allocating 5,000 units of public war housing that Los Angeles needed immediately. Holtzendorff believed housing should be allocated not “for Negroes, but simply for war workers.” Unless prompt, large-scale action was undertaken to address the housing situation, opined conference attendee (and assistant to County Supervisor Ford) Arthur Miley, “we are going to be subject to disease, epidemics, race riots and a general breaking down of the home front in this area.”27 In October 1943, an integrated public war housing project, to be constructed by the NHA and located in Venice, engendered considerable protest. Venice property owners voiced their displeasure regarding the rapidly changing spatial and racial composition of Los Angeles to the City Council. “I personally own sixty-eight pieces of property in this area,” wrote K. M. Eram, “and if this project goes through it will depreciate my property to practically nothing.” The postwar planning for the improvement of Venice Beach would be for naught, asserted Mrs. Maude Rittmaster, chair of the Venice Round Table: “Despite the housing needs of the moment, we must not lose sight of the recreational needs of our white people in the future.” “We hold no malice against the negro,” explained M. E. Diebold, chairman of the Venice Citizens Committee, “but their leaders appear to be having a change in attitude and now demand the right to intermingle with the white and if we protest we are declared intolerant and prejudiced.” Mrs. Albert Ralphs Jr. was more blunt: “Maybe Eleanor [Roosevelt] would like them next door to her, but not us.” Expressing a minor viewpoint, Katherine de

58

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Wille Quinn wrote, “This is no time to concider [sic] the color of a mans skin, but it is a time to concider the rights of free men to live in a free world regardless of color.” The City Council, having no jurisdiction in the matter, moved that its communications be received and Wled.28 The Culver City for Caucasians Committee, threatened by this project in adjacent Venice, sought to solidify race-restricting covenants in order to preserve Culver City as an all-white area. The Culver City attorney stated, “You cannot prevent an owner from selling property to a Negro, but such restrictions will prevent him from occupying it.” This ofWcially sanctioned racism engendered an indignant open letter to the Culver City mayor from Aliso Village tenants: The Aliso Village Victory Council, speaking for 700 families of all colors and religious beliefs, living in harmony in a government housing project, wish to refute and protest your attitude on barring Negro tenants from Culver City Housing. . . . your attitude is detrimental to the prosecution of the war program, since you are encouraging disunity and discrimination at a time when the entire world is Wghting to establish unity and abolish discrimination. As a good American you should use your ofWces as an executive and leader of a city, to spread the doctrines of our constitution for “liberty and justice for all.”29

The NHA and the CHA dropped the plans to construct the Venice project on November 16, 1943, claiming that housing for African American war workers was needed more in other areas of the city. However, the Labor Herald, the weekly newspaper of the California CIO, asserted that the protest of the Venice property owners was instrumental in the project’s demise, and the People’s World suggested that intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan lay behind the CHA’s decision.30 The opposition to an integrated federal private war housing project in October and November 1943 further illustrates the difWculties of planning a democratic city. Located at Avalon Boulevard and 104th Street, the 465-unit project was to be constructed adjacent to a white area of Watts. “All these, you’ll pardon me for swearing,” apologized Mr. DeHogue of the South Los Angeles Homeowners Association speaking at their October 26 meeting, “all these goddam New York Jews are coming here to put the niggers in our neighborhood.” Realty broker Walter Carrol reassured homeowners that “we caucasians are certainly not going to stand for any colored people deteriorating our property.”

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The California Eagle contrasted this bigotry to the racial quiet of the nearby Hacienda Village public housing project where “almost equal numbers of whites, Negroes and Mexicans live peaceably side by side.” The actions of the NAACP Youth Council persuaded the Los Angeles City Council to approve the project in November, as Charlotta Bass recalled: In the midst of the heated discussion some twenty or more Negro youths entered the City Council chambers, marched up front, surrounded the City Council members, marched back again up and down the aisles. They were very orderly. There was no shouting, no haranguing. But there was something about them that made everyone understand that they meant business. They carried banners with such slogans as “Fight Hitler, Not Each Other,” . . . “Homes For All War Workers,” “Let’s Restrict Restrictions.”31

Despite the siting approval, the City Council, with a vote of 8–7, killed a resolution to go on record as condemning racial discrimination in the Watts project. The two-hundred-member Hollywood Women’s Council angrily voiced their displeasure to the council, stating “it is an act of retrogression in human relationships to encourage such discrimination and disunity among citizens.” Although personal prejudice could not be legislated against, they acknowledged, “we urge you to initiate such steps as will tend toward the removal of every last vestige of racial discrimination in Los Angeles.” Nevertheless, the City Council again voted down, on December 15, a substitute motion stating that the council was “opposed in principle to any form of discrimination and . . . is desirous of fostering and encouraging in this community the broadest unity and tolerance.” Yet the verbal debate proved moot. The underwriting bank refused to assume the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)–insured mortgage for the project, claiming the area was protected from the invasion of African Americans by race-restricting covenants.32 The municipal administration was reluctant to acknowledge the growing multiracial character of the city, and their nebulous response to the situation was a focus for criticism by the left-liberal popular front. A November 1943 meeting of the city’s minority leaders and the Bowron administration suggested the formation of a citywide body to end discrimination in employment and housing. Bowron did not warm to this proposal. The People’s World reported that “the housing problem was quickly solved by the . . . good graces of Mr. [Deputy Mayor Orville] Caldwell, . . . who recommended that Negro people who could

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not Wnd housing ought to go home, and that they should write to their friends and tell them not to come to Los Angeles.” The paper criticized Mayor Bowron for refusing “to accept any responsibility for solving discrimination against Negroes and Mexicans in this city.”33 At the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee hearings in Los Angeles on congested areas that same month, Caldwell expounded on his above analysis. The “Deep South Negro” was a deluge threatening to swamp the city: Now they come here and get into some war industry, and then comes Saturday night and they Wnd lots of money in their pockets. They don’t know what to do with it. They get liquored up, stuff themselves with marijuana, and then they become a serious problem. And from the housing standpoint, we haven’t the facilities to take care of them.

Caldwell testiWed that Mayor Bowron had appealed to the War Manpower Commission in an attempt to stop the in-migration of African Americans. The California Eagle editorialized that “Los Angeles’ city government is more interested in maintaining a lily-white community than in building the ships and planes of victory.”34 Combating Racism The allocation of housing among the various ethnic groups that lived in Los Angeles brought the issues of segregation, integration, and democratic housing to the fore of public debate and activism. A July 1944 meeting of Los Angeles church, labor, and civic leaders to form a chapter of the PaciWc Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play strongly criticized the segmentation of city space “into ghettos or little Mexicos or little Tokios.” In February 1945, a conference entitled “Housing and Racial Discrimination” was held at the First Congregationalist Church to initiate a campaign to free the city’s neighborhoods of segregation and discrimination in housing. Sponsored by the Los Angeles CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Interracial Council of the Church Federation, the Catholic Interracial Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and others, the conference was attended by 246 delegates representing 103 organizations concerned with housing in Los Angeles. Featured speakers included Mayor Bowron, Holtzendorff, California Attorney General Robert Kenny, and County Supervisor Ford.35 The integration of public housing and the availability of that housing to minority workers was of particular interest to the CIO. When

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two black families moved into Normont Terrace, project manager Drayton Bryant spent “three hours on my feet trying to convince a crowd of more than a hundred angry Southern whites” not to forcibly evict those families. The Channel Heights tenants’ council, upon learning of the situation at Normont Terrace, contacted the harbor unions about the issue. The CIO Maritime Council distributed printed material at Normont Terrace condemning racist agitation, and the CIO Shipbuilders Union threatened to expel those who opposed integration in the project. This proved very effective, as most of the Normont Terrace tenants were CIO members working in the shipyards.36 At the 1943 Naval Affairs Subcommittee investigation of congested areas, Oscar Fuss, regional director of the Los Angeles CIO Council, demanded 20,000 units of public housing, available to all war workers “whether white, black or pink.” Because of their policy of integration, Fuss singled out the projects managed by the CHA as ideals. Although noting that a interracial workforce was essential to the war effort, a congressman questioned Fuss as to whether there should be some segregation in the housing projects. “I don’t think there should be any discrimination,” angrily responded Fuss. I don’t see how you can segregate this group of people in all black housing projects or all white housing projects. Why don’t you propose that in industry, not only in housing? Why don’t you just segregate them right in the plants and carry the thing to its ludicrous conclusion?

George Weaver, the director of the National CIO Committee to Abolish Discrimination, wrote to Phil Connelly in 1945 that Los Angeles “has made the National Committee determined to push this question of choosing occupancy of housing projects on the basis of race, until we reach a clearcut decision that it is either lawful or unlawful. We maintain that it is unlawful.”37 Public housing tenants were taking steps to deal with issues of race in their daily life. Testifying at the Naval Affairs Subcommittee hearings, Clement Markert, vice president of the Banning Homes residents’ council, identiWed “the problem of racial minorities” as being one of the foremost concerns of public housing residents: “The experience of Banning Homes, which has a relatively large Negro and Mexican population, indicates that the solution lies in fearlessly enforcing a policy of no discrimination coupled with a systematic effort to integrate all races into the life of the community.” Racist behavior ran deep, however. Henry Kraus considered it a major victory when an avowed segregationist and

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self-professed bigot from the South, after months of living next to an African American family—months of sharing a clothesline and supervising each other’s children—changed her terminology from “nigger” to “negro.” “You can’t expect a revolution overnight,” Kraus told his wife. “These are lifetime prejudices we’re up against.”38 The Threats of Racial Violence The left-liberal popular front compared the omnipresent threat of racial violence in wartime Los Angeles, often intertwined with the provision of public housing, with contemporary events in other U.S. cities. Arthur Miley reported to County Supervisor Ford on an August 1943 meeting in Mayor Bowron’s ofWce, about the housing situation among minority groups, that “the question of preventing race riots, such as occurred in New York and Detroit, was taken into consideration.” At the Sojourner Truth Public Housing project in Detroit, “racial conXict sharpened over public housing as black and white defense workers competed for inadequate accommodations,” leading to violent and protracted race riots in 1942. “We should draw lessons from the Detroit holocaust,” editorialized the California Eagle. “It is signiWcant that the race upheaval there Wzzled out whenever it approached an area in which Negroes and whites are living democratically side by side.”39 From June 3 through 13, 1943, off-duty military personnel sought out zoot-suited youth (primarily Mexican American); confronted their quarry on the streets, in movie theaters, or on streetcars; and then beat and stripped them. The blame for the violence was laid on the “pachucos”—Mexican American and African American youth wearing the oversized and nonconformist zoot suits, long ducktail haircuts, and pointed shoes. Leaving Aliso Village on the evening of June 7, 1943, project manager Roger Johnson witnessed the beatings of several pachucos by servicemen while the police complacently stood by. He subsequently referred to pachucos as “colorful revolutionists in the ranks Wghting racial discrimination.”40 The left-liberal popular front saw the “zoot-suit riots” as racial violence exacerbated by poor housing, overcrowding, lack of sanitation facilities, and a low standard of living. Carey McWilliams, coordinator of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, offered such viewpoints both in print and in testimony to Jack Tenney’s unsympathetic California Un-American Activities Committee. The Los Angeles Committee for Better Housing and Planning shared this assessment and wired the administrator of the NHA in the wake of the riots that the

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EAST SIDE NEGRO SLUM AREA THAT WAS A DISGRACE TO LOS ANGELES WHEN

40,000

WITH NEARLY

PEOPLE LIVED THERE TWELVE YEARS AGO NOW JAMMED

100,000

PEOPLE, MOST OF THEM WAR WORKERS, CRIME

AND DISEASE MOUNTING IN WHOLE AREA STOP MAJOR EPIDEMICS AND RACE RIOTS ARE IMMEDIATE DANGER STOP WE URGE YOUR OFFICE TO PROGRAM AT LEAST

5000

PUBLIC WAR HOUSING UNITS AVAILABLE FOR

RACIAL MINORITIES TO HELP RELIEVE DESPERATE SITUATION.

Despite pleas such as these, there was a dearth of public war housing allocated to Los Angeles.41 Visions of the Postwar World Public housing tenant activism was channeled upward by the left-liberal popular front to consolidate the public housing program within the policies of the welfare state. New ways of living—day care, nurseries, integration, socialized medicine, shared housekeeping, democratic selfmanagement—that had been practiced and implemented by the tenants themselves might be reinforced by legislative action in the postwar world. Nathaniel Keith, a federal housing ofWcial during the war, later wrote that “there was increasing pressure from organized labor and other liberal groups . . . for an aggressive and comprehensive postwar housing and urban development program.”42 John Bauman has identiWed two perspectives within public housing proponents’ vision of the postwar world. The regionalists sought to follow contemporary economic and social trends toward decentralizing the city. Housers-redevelopers wanted to restore and revitalize life within the existing central city. The former, represented by Catherine Bauer of the NPHC and R. J. Thomas of the United Auto Workers (UAW)–CIO Postwar Planning Commission, saw housing as the center of newly created planned environments. They “envisioned a new urban conWguration marked by plentiful open space, light, playgrounds, and parks.” The latter, which included NAHO and the professionals employed by local housing authorities, saw good housing as going hand in hand with the stability of redeveloped, central-city communities. While both foresaw private and public housing as complementary components of their visions of postwar urbanism, public housing for veterans as well as for low-income families was essential for its realization.43 Public housing and urban redevelopment were central components of the postwar plans of both houses of organized labor. The AFL called for building 500,000 units of housing per year in combination with a

Figure 4. Organized labor envisioned a postwar city redeveloped on a human scale in which public housing would figure prominently. From UAW-CIO, Homes for Workers in Planned Communities through Collective Action, Detroit: UAW-CIO, 1944.

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nationwide slum-clearance program. The CIO promoted the creation of a better America through informed political action propelled by an educated and militant union membership. These class-conscious workers would, applauded the People’s World, “press for speedy action on postwar housing legislation.” The CIO popularized visions of the postwar world that emphasized planned communities, redeveloped cities, and an expanded role for public housing. They called for the construction of 1.5 million housing units throughout the country over twenty years. At least 500,000 of these units would be public housing—“more if private housing fails to do its job. . . . If they can’t, then public housing and cooperative housing will have to take over the responsibility.”44 Like public housing proponents, the private housing industry too had its own vision of the postwar world. Robert Gerholz, president of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), predicted that 10 million affordable homes would be constructed in the decade following the war. Public housing was “only a war emergency measure” that, if unchecked, might allow the nation to “be precipitated into a socialist state.” It had no place in this vision. A large-scale urban redevelopment program unencumbered by public housing was foreseen by downtown commercial interests.45 By contrast, the left-liberal popular front saw an expanded role for the welfare state in the regulation of housing and feared a return to a pre–New Deal housing market. “I want people to realize that public housing has come to stay,” said Mrs. Virginia Lindsey, president of the resident council of Channel Heights. “People like having Uncle Sam as a landlord.” Battle lines were being drawn for a conXict to retain state intervention in housing in the postwar world. Charlotte Ingram wrote to Roger Johnson to offer her skills as a stenographer in the upcoming struggle: “There will likely be a big Wght as the Apartment Managers and Owners Association is a powerful organization that will no doubt use all their inXuence. . . . For over twenty years I have lived in Los Angeles, mostly in apartments, and during that time have had some pretty skunky landlords, but the present one out-skunks them all.”46 Throughout the war, the need for nurseries and day care for working mothers was of continual concern. As part of its postwar agenda, the CIO called for the continued employment of women on the same wage scale as men and for government responsibility for adequate child-care facilities. The public housing projects, with their emphasis on social planning and nurseries, were looked upon favorably as templates

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for the future. An article in Harper’s Bazaar proposed that women experiment with types of housing “which involve some attempt at commercial or co-operative organization on a community basis” in order to share and reduce the drudgery of housework. Women had no wish to return to the prewar private housing market and the “Hitlerian routine” of housewives “being mere servants for their husbands and children.”47 An Assessment of the CHA’s Wartime Activities According to the CHA’s 1945 consolidated report, there were 53,469 Angelenos living in 12,275 units of public housing by the end of the war. Slightly different Wgures are found in another CHA document of September 27, 1945, which reports that there were 9,605 units of public war housing—6,356 family dwelling units, 349 trailers, and 2,900 dormitory units, providing shelter to 36,141 people—as compared to the 8,807 units listed in the 1945 report. Because of the turnover rate and mobility among war workers, the total number who lived in the projects at some time was far greater than the numbers given above. In the words of the CHA, public housing was “a leading part of the home front.”48 Despite this impressive record, the majority of federal funding went to private war housing. The Division of Defense Housing Coordination (DDHC), under the tutelage of Charles F. Palmer, consistently ignored or denigrated the concerns of left-leaning public housing proponents, especially their contention that the projects might form the nucleus of postwar communities. The DDHC instead relied on private builders as the mainstay of national practice. The policy of the DDHC’s successor, the NHA, decreed that when private enterprise was unable to accommodate the needs of defense housing, federally constructed temporary housing would take up the slack. The left-liberal popular front saw this temporary shelter not as the building blocks of postwar community modernism but as potential slums of the future. The “invisible congress” of real estate lobbying activities in the nation’s capital was instrumental in curtailing public war housing. From the halls of Congress and from their preferential status within national defense housing policy, real estate interests would consistently denigrate public housing as inefWcient, alien, and un-American.49 While some of the overt antagonism of the real estate interests to public housing abated somewhat at the beginning of the war, the basic enmity remained. Roger Johnson wrote to his friend Phil Connelly:

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You ought to know that since the [Better Housing and Planning] Committee has been functioning, the real estate and Chamber of Commerce interests have been thwarting all of our efforts to activise [sic] the Committee. This is particularly true of our friend Philip Norton [of the Southern California Association of Real Estate Boards]. Since the Pearl Harbor incident and since the air raid alarm the other night [February 24–25, 1942], Norton and his friends are a little more concerned about the situation, but we still expect to have our difWculties with him.50

Under the auspices of the NAHB, Los Angeles home builder and public housing opponent Fritz B. Burns undertook a two-year (1942– 44) cross-country campaign to mobilize his fellows in the industry against the possible preference within national policy for public over private war housing. He wired President Roosevelt and expressed his disdain of “public housers,” hinting that socialist inXuence was inherent in the public housing program. During the 1943 Naval Affairs Subcommittee hearings in Los Angeles on the investigation of congested areas, all testimony—with the exception of that of Charles L. Parr, assistant secretary-manager of the Apartment House Association of Los Angeles—conWrmed that the city was suffering a desperate housing shortage and asked, pleaded, or demanded that the federal government assist in alleviating the situation. Parr, in contrast, maintained that there was a surplus of housing in Los Angeles—enough to accommodate 170,560 persons. The scarcity was artiWcial, he asserted, due to the wartime rent controls of the OfWce of Price Administration.51 In a 1947 address to the Committee of 1,000 Veteran Home Buyers, Frank Wilkinson condemned real estate interests for their wartime opposition to public housing in general and to the program of the CHA in particular. Wilkinson pointed out that despite pleas by the directors of the aircraft and shipbuilding industries, because of the hindrance of landlords and private builders, the CHA was allocated only 8,807 units of temporary public war housing by the federal authorities. This share was less than that given to any other war production center in the West.52 At the outset of the war, Los Angeles subscribed to federal guidelines regarding the distribution of public housing by race. This meant that the CHA followed the existing pattern of segregation in the city. Projects were Wlled according to the racial composition of the neighborhood. Some were to be multiracial, while others were to be all-white,

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all–African American, or all–Mexican American, based on the surrounding population. The 1942 protest of the CHC at Hacienda Village ended single-race projects, but a “quota system” remained whereby a Wxed percentage of public housing was allocated by race. Local policy in Los Angeles ambiguously referred questions of integration back to the federal level. The California Eagle called this a “pass-the-bucket argument—‘it’s all Washington’s fault.’”53 The CHA liberalized its “Negro quota” from 7 percent to 15 percent in January 1943. Following protests in the black community, organized by the California Eagle, the Sentinel, attorney Thomas L. GrifWth, the NAACP, the CIO, and the Urban League, among others, the CHA rescinded the quota system at William Mead Homes and Aliso Village in July 1943. Encouraged by this victory, African Americans pressed on to remove the quota system in the remaining projects so that housing units were to be rented with a “Wrst come, Wrst served” policy. By March 1945, Now (a Los Angeles civil rights newspaper) approvingly observed of Aliso Village: “One seldom Wnds two Mexican or two Russian or two Negro families living side by side. . . . Through these new contacts the Aliso Villagers enrich themselves [and] attain broader horizons.”54 The integration of the projects and the abandonment of the quota system opened up a debate among the left-leaning public housing managers in the CHA. Some managers argued that public housing should be allocated according to need; but under this procedure, all the projects would soon be all African American. Others, on the other hand, held that in order to attain some form of integration, public housing would have to be allocated to a certain proportion of whites who, though within the income guidelines of the CHA, were more likely than African Americans or Mexican Americans to Wnd shelter in a racially segmented private housing market. The former position was advocated by Frank Wilkinson and the latter by Oliver Haskell. Pettis Perry, the top-ranking African American ofWcial of the Communist Political Association in Los Angeles, opined that integrated public housing should be maintained and encouraged in the interests of a new society founded on racial harmony. Black Democrats, Republicans, and socialists were in agreement with Perry. In a 1982 interview, Haskell recalled that Wilkinson termed Perry a “chauvinist” after Perry’s integrationist pronouncement. For his part, Wilkinson emphasized the housing needs of blacks as the absolutely critical issue.55 According to Robert Weaver, nonwhites constituted 35 percent of

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CHA tenants in the fall of 1944; Mignon Rothstein asserted that the CHA Wlled about 27 percent of applications from African Americans during the war. The CHA reported the racial composition of public war housing at the end of the war as 70 percent white, 25 percent African American, and 5 percent “other.” Though minority occupancy percentages at the end of the war had markedly increased over the 1943 quotas, Table 4 shows the pattern inherited from the quota system. Although most of the projects had registered modest gains in African American occupancy by 1945, projects like Estrada Courts or Dana Strand Village had no black tenants yet had a percentage of “other.” Portsmouth Homes and Lumina Park had all-white tenant populations, and Jordon Downs and Imperial Annex were nearly all black.56 The Political Consolidation of the Left-Liberal Popular Front Within the public housing projects, political expression emerged from the communal experiences of tenants as they organized around issues of self-management, shared housework, day care, opposition to racism, and confrontation of hostile real estate interests. Henry Kraus recalled Channel Heights as a “world of living and striving and learning together.” Residents of the projects were bulwarks of the Roosevelt coalition, overwhelmingly registered as Democrats, and sympathetic to the perspective of the left-liberal popular front. At the same time, the leftliberal popular front encouraged and nourished the initiative of tenants in their organization of daily life.57 Local elected ofWcials did not initially welcome the politics of the left-liberal popular front. This aloofness could be seen in the Bowron administration’s reluctance to accept the changing racial composition of the city and in the City Council’s refusal to condemn segregation in housing. Yet by the end of the war, Bowron had strengthened his ties with minorities and the Left and had even broadened his constituency to encompass the city’s conservative interests, as represented by the Times. The moderate liberals who had defected from his camp had been, wrote Oliver Carlson, “replaced in part by a strange combination of certain downtown big business interests and local communists.”58 As part of his 1945 campaign statement, Bowron promised an extensive postwar slum-clearance program that would utilize both private and public housing. Carl Winter, president of the Communist Political Association in Los Angeles, pointed out that Bowron’s reelection platform “represented a considerable step forward since the mayor had long shown weaknesses on the question of public housing.” Bowron’s

Table 4. Occupancy by race of public housing projects managed by the CHA, 1944–45 (percentage of total residents)

Project

Ramona Gardensa Pico Gardensa Pueblo del Rioa Rancho San Pedroa Aliso Villagea William Mead Homesa Estrada Courtsa Rose Hill Courtsa Avalon Gardensa Hacienda Villagea Pacific Park Trailersb Jordan Downsb Pueblo del Rio Annexb Imperial Courtsb Corregidor Park Annexb Imperial Annex 1b Estrada Annex 1b Dana Strand Villageb Normont Terraceb Channel Heightsb

White (December 1944)

White (December 1945)

Negro (December 1944)

23.3 30.7 1.3 70.1 39.9 42.2 85.4 75.5 98.7 20.9 0 1.8 2.2 3.2 0.3 0 71.8 95.5 94.2 80.3

20.6 29.9 0.5 65.8 37.2 32.1 83.3 73.6 96.2 14.3 16.5 3.0 0 0 0.6 0 69.4 93.9 96.2 77.2

13.5 13.7 93.8 16.8 21.0 17.2 0 1.1 0 54.8 0 92.9 97.8 88.7 97.8 98.5 0 0 0.5 13.0

Negro (December 1945)

16.8 18.3 95.2 16.9 23.3 22.5 0 2.0 0 61.5 10.8 91.5 100 89.8 98.8 97.8 0 0 0.5 14.9

Other (December 1944)

Other (December 1945)

62.8 55.6 4.5 13.7 39.1 40.6 14.6 23.4 1.3 24.3 0 5.3 0 8.2 1.9 2.5 28.2 4.5 5.3 6.7

62.6 58.8 4.3 17.3 39.5 45.4 16.7 24.3 3.8 24.2 70.4 5.7 0 10.2 0.6 2.2 30.6 6.1 1.3 7.3

Table 4. (continued)

Project

Portsmouth Homesb Banning Homesb Wilmall Cottagesb Dana Strand Annexb Bataan Parkb Western Terraceb Lumina Parkb Wilmington Apartmentsb Wilmall Dormitoriesb

White (December 1944)

0 80.8 92.3 75.9 79.4 0 99.2 93.2 0

White (December 1945)

100 74.2 87.5 67.4 64.4 65.4 100 89.0 87.8

Negro (December 1944)

Negro (December 1945)

Other (December 1944)

Other (December 1945)

0 16.0 0 19.3 16.3 0 0 4.6 0

0 21.4 0 24.7 30.5 25.5 0 9.0 7.0

0 3.2 7.7 4.8 4.3 0 0.8 2.2 0

0 4.4 12.5 7.9 5.1 9.1 0 2.0 5.2

Source: Mignon E. Rothstein, “A Study of the Growth of Negro Population in Los Angeles and Available Housing Facilities between 1940 and 1946” (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1950). Notes: The “Other” category is defined as Americans of Mexican, Japanese, Filipino, or Chinese descent. a Built under the 1937 Housing Act b Public war housing

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successful 1945 campaign “set into motion large numbers of citizens. . . . Thus the bridge was laid for carrying the democratic coalition . . . and further broadening and extending it.” Bowron’s Los Angeles was, at the close of the war, oriented leftward. The 1945 municipal elections, rejoiced the CIO’s Labor Herald, “gave Los Angeles probably the best city council it has ever had.”59 Conclusion Public housing in Los Angeles emerged from World War II to become more than just dormitories for war workers. The image of a democratic society underscored the everyday life in the public housing projects. By building a democratic politics that embodied the visions of a better world, proponents hoped, the public housing program would become a viable and entrenched institution of the developing modern city. These visions, vocalized by the left-liberal popular front, promised to be the foundation of a new social order that would be embedded in the welfare state. The 1945 annual report of the CHA captured the

Figure 5. The CHA’s 1945 annual report featured a multiracial contingent of veterans and war workers marching into Los Angeles and demanding better housing as their right. From Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Decent Home . . . an American Right, 5th, 6th, and 7th Consolidated Annual Report (Los Angeles, 1945).

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optimism with the illustration of a multiracial contingent of veterans and war workers marching into Los Angeles and demanding modern housing as their right.60 The effects of World War II greatly accelerated the scope and abilities of the public housing movement. Visions of a new social order, of a better world, were quickened and compressed for the duration of the conXict. To what extent would such a vision be carried over into the postwar city?

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CHAPTER 3

David and Goliath: The Struggle to Expand the Public Housing Program

esiring to maintain wartime unity and not wanting to retard the war effort, the left-liberal popular front had retreated from forcefully advocating that the federal government construct permanent public war housing. Instead, it acquiesced to the interests of private builders within the NHA. In 1944, Helen Fuller wrote in the New Republic of the wartime consolidation and legislative power of the real estate lobby, suggesting the need to develop a broadly based, popular mobilization for public housing:

D

The vast support for public housing which has grown up in the New Deal years still remains unorganized. The few groups into which those who believe in public housing have formed themselves are pitifully small and poor. . . . But . . . increasing numbers of public housing ofWcials are refusing to be intimidated by the opposition’s propaganda and remind each other that a little guy named David once slew a giant named Goliath.1

The imagery of David and Goliath provides an apt metaphor for the Los Angeles public housing program from the end of World War II to August 1949. Despite the foreboding tide of electoral conservatism, the severe postwar housing shortage led many to believe that the free market espoused by the private housing industry could not cope with such a dilemma. Liberals and the Left promoted public housing as a central component in the alleviation of the housing crisis. With the 75

76

David and Goliath

passage of the U.S. Housing Act (the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill) in July 1949, it would seem that the public housing David had dealt the real estate Goliath a debilitating blow. The following month, Los Angeles, with unanimous City Council approval, adopted a federal contract to build 10,000 public housing units. Los Angeles was on its way to becoming, as the CHA had promised in its 1945 consolidated report, the nation’s Wrst city free of bad housing. The left-liberal popular front was now beginning to unravel into “left” and “liberal” camps. Anti-Communism and Red-baiting were highly visible components in the front’s dissolution. The initial clashes within the left-liberal popular front occurred in the foreign policy arena. The public housing program, though a target of an incipient Red Scare that would result in some setbacks and delays, remained on course and eventually triumphed in the 1949 Housing Act. The Postwar Housing Crisis In March 1945, Mayor Bowron had sent a telegram to President Roosevelt: “I appeal to you for help in connection with a critical housing shortage in Los Angeles.” Bowron claimed that there were over 100,000 unWlled applications for dwellings that had been Wled with either the CHA or the city’s war housing centers. In an accompanying public statement, the mayor emphasized that of this Wgure, housing would be required for at least 14,000 families of the city’s burgeoning African American population. Discharged veterans, former war workers, and returning Japanese Americans overwhelmed the existing housing stock: “There is simply no place for them to live,” claimed Bowron. The housing shortage, he glumly told his weekly radio audience that November, “will become more acute, . . . [and] worse before it gets better. There is no relief immediately in sight.”2 The depth of the crisis was staggering. About 162,000 families, including 50,000 veterans, were living in tents, garages, trailers, and Wretrap hotels. They were doubled- and tripled-up in existing houses, sleeping on boats in the harbor or in buses without tires. Rooms in motels and hotels, when one could be found, could be occupied only for a three-day period. The California State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission estimated that the production of 280,000 housing units over a Wve-year period would be required to eliminate the shortage in Los Angeles County. In a 1946 comedy routine, Bob Hope told of seeing a man in a phone booth depositing a hat full of

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nickels into the coin box: “‘I said to him, “Brother, you must be calling China.”’ ‘No,’ the man replied, ‘I’m just paying the rent.’”3 In September 1945, the CHA’s Holtzendorff pledged that no war workers would be evicted from public housing while the crisis continued. Later that month, a report to Mayor Bowron presented by the CHA and the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Disposition of War Housing recommended no disposition or demolition of war housing until the city’s housing conditions returned to the 1940 level of a 4.8 percent vacancy ratio. Although the report afWrmed the legislative mandate that Lanham Act housing “should be disposed of as promptly as may be practical,” the current crisis precluded that course of action. Inasmuch as approximately 30% of the [36,000] occupants of public war housing projects are of racial minority groups, we believe that, . . . special care must be taken to insure that the disposition of war housing does not aggravate their already serious handicaps.4

The housing shortage was particularly hard-felt on the Eastside and in South-Central Los Angeles, where veterans competed with Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese Americans for the scarce commodity of a place to live. The Hearst-owned Examiner indignantly informed its readers of the federal War Relocation Authority’s assistance in supplying trailers to the returning Nisei. “Forgotten were the thousands of returning war veterans and their families, and other solid citizens,” complained the paper. “It was everything for the Japs. Nothing for others.” Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas stated that the only place that needed housing worse than her 25 percent black Fourteenth District “must surely be Hiroshima.” One housing activist, noting that the postwar crisis in housing was really an extension of the same problems that minorities had dealt with for years, caustically quipped to Charles Spaulding, “It’s now respectable to have a housing shortage.”5 Women were politically active in housing struggles because they did not want to relinquish the Wnancial and social independence they had won during the war. The Emergency Mothers’ Committee, consisting of more than one hundred Aliso Village residents, planned a “Save Child Care and Housing” rally to be held in the project’s school auditorium in September 1945. Committee head Bertha Marshall saw threats to child care not merely as a consequence of the diminishing of a wartime need: “It’s designed to get women out of industry and back to the

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home. It smacks too much of Hitler’s ‘kirche, kuche, and kinder.’” The threatened closure of the playground in Ramona Gardens the following year engendered a similar response. Lillian Gates wrote in a 1947 Political Affairs that the social basis for popularly based tenant and housing organizations were to be found “in the activities of consumers’ councils organized and led almost completely by women.”6 The freeway program, put on hold for the war’s duration, had resumed shortly after V-J day. In order to make way for the Hollywood Freeway, Wve hundred families in the northern part of Bunker Hill— many of Mexican or Filipino origin—were issued eviction notices in October 1945. The Freeway Anti-Eviction Committee was informed by the CHA that not a single vacant public housing unit was available and that returning veterans, not freeway evictees, would go to the head of the 6,000-family waiting list. Councilman Ed J. Davenport warned the City Council about the Anti-Eviction Committee, “The situation is getting out of control. . . . They want to march on something and seem to prefer the City Hall.” Augustus Hawkins, an African American state assemblyman from Los Angeles, saw the need for new highways and roads but questioned giving them priority in the face of the housing crisis. Members of Congress from California Helen Gahagan Douglas, Chet HolliWeld, and Clyde Doyle concurred. They helped persuade California’s governor, Earl Warren, to delay the construction of the Hollywood Freeway until the housing crisis was alleviated.7 Popular Mobilization and the Crisis In November 1945 the Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing and Planning presented a three-point program to counter the housing crisis. The organization—chaired by Roger Johnson with Msgr. Thomas O’Dwyer, Rabbi Edgar Magnin, Rev. Willsie Martin, the AFL’s C. J. Haggerty, the CIO’s Phil Connelly, and Carey McWilliams serving as directors—called for (1) removal of federal red tape so as to allow a freer Xow of construction material to the builders of low-cost housing, (2) passage of the Wagner-Ellender Bill currently before Congress, and (3) appointment of a Wve-member civic committee that would be empowered to speak for the city and county and to act as a central clearinghouse for all activities designed to create more housing accommodations, whether public, private, or a combination of both.8 The November 19 People’s World reported that “an aroused group of leading citizens backed by the Citizens Housing Council” met with Mayor Bowron in November 1945 and urged him to declare a housing

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emergency. They implored Bowron to request, via Governor Warren and President Harry S. Truman, that the Red Cross be allowed to employ its disaster and emergency funds in Los Angeles. This objective was spearheaded at a November 30, 1945, conference of Los Angeles organizations engaged in augmenting the housing supply. Included were the CHC, the Inter-Project Residents Council, the YWCA, the YMCA, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Urban League, the American Veterans Committee (AVC), the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), the Freeway Anti-Eviction Committee, the AFL Building Trades, the CIO, the American Friends Society, the Japanese American Resettlement Committee, and the American Legion, among others.9 Mayor Bowron requested in December 1945 that $100,000 be advanced by the City Council to the CHA for the construction of emergency housing units for 360 families of veterans, those families displaced by the construction of the Hollywood and Santa Ana freeways, and those families living in cramped and overcrowded quarters under unsanitary conditions. “I feel that the city has a very deWnite obligation in providing housing of this character,” he wrote to the council. On December 10, the appropriation was unanimously approved, though the $100,000 was criticized by some councilmen as inadequate—“not even a drop in the bucket”—given the magnitude of the housing crisis. The mayor, however, considered this Wgure to be just the beginning of an increasing funding Xow.10 The CHC had been reinvigorated as a popular organization during the postwar period. Operating as an umbrella organization for a plethora of civic, religious, ethnic, and popular associations, the CHC gave a voice to those most severely affected by the housing crisis and powerfully broadcast that voice into the political forum. At a meeting on January 25, 1946, the CHC adopted bylaws to consolidate itself on a permanent footing: It shall be our purpose to work for a community so adequately housed as to make possible living conditions conductive to developing the highest possible state of health, welfare and community morals. The Los Angeles Citizens Housing Council will create and promote a program for the development of both public and private housing to meet these needs.

The CHC was composed of one representative from each of the following organizations: American Legion, AFL, YWCA, YMCA, Catholic Interracial Council, CIO, NAACP, Veterans of Foreign Wars, B’nai

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B’rith, AVC, DAV, Welfare Council of Los Angeles, Democratic County Central Committee, National Citizens Political Action Committee, National Lawyers Guild, Inter-Project Residents Council, Urban League, Freeway Anti-Eviction Committee, League of Women Voters, and the Los Angeles Church Federation.11 Heretofore staffed by volunteers, the CHC appointed its Wrst professional executive director in December 1946. Shirley Adelson Siegal, former executive director of the New York City Housing Council and graduate of the Yale School of Law, described her new task as coordinating community thinking around slum clearance, housing for veterans, and housing projects. Arthur Miley, assistant to County Supervisor John Anson Ford, sent a memo to Ford of Siegal’s appointment. “He would not say that she was ‘left-ish,’” Miley wrote of a conversation with Bob Burns of the County Housing Authority, “but [she] believes in getting things done.” “In regard to the Citizens’ Housing Council in the City,” Miley added, “Bob feels it is quite well dominated by Frank Wilkenson [sic], although as long as Msgr. O’Dwyer is still active he feels that things will not get too far out of hand.”12 Organized by the CHC, delegates representing almost two hundred different veterans, labor, church, and civic organizations met on January 18, 1947, at the Unitarian Church on Eighth Street to demand emergency housing action by state, federal, city, and county governments. This was “the democratic way of working for a solution to the [housing] crisis,” according to Monsignor O’Dwyer. The principal speaker was Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, whose speech, entitled “A Decent Home Is an American Right,” railed against the “lobby of housing proWteers”—“the best-Wnanced and most unscrupulous combine that ever mocked democracy.” She advocated a permanent emergency program to provide decent housing for veterans and to stimulate the economy, a proposal that “Wts in with most of our mid-20th-century concepts.” The conference adopted an ambitious program to be enacted at federal, state, and local levels of government, including Wnancial appropriations for the construction of rental housing, an endorsement of the Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill, and an end to housing restrictions because of race, color, creed, or national origin.13 Veterans’ Housing Quipped the People’s World of the intensity of the housing crisis from the perspective of discharged servicemen: “Veterans will Wnd it just

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as tough establishing a beach-head on the home-front as it was in Normandy or on Iwo Jima.” In November 1945, veteran David Mizrahi, his wife Sophie, and their two-year-old son Bobbie set up a pup tent in Pershing Square in order to publicize the predicament they and other GIs’ families faced. The Mizrahis were not destitute; there simply was no housing available. David stayed at his mother’s domicile while his wife and son lived with Sophie’s sister-in-law. The City Park Commission ordered them to strike their tent and leave. Reading about the Mizrahis in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, newspaper, an executive of the Tulsa-based Spartan Aircraft Co. offered the Mizrahis the temporary use of his Wrm’s hotel suite. In addition, Spartan Aircraft’s president announced that a twenty-three-foot aluminum trailer would be shipped from Tulsa for use by the Mizrahis. David would not accept “charity” and insisted on paying rent.14 The Mizrahis’ good fortune was not shared by the majority of veterans. The liberal Daily News editorialized that the housing problem required “intelligent, planned cooperation among federal, state and local authorities” and touted the Wagner-Ellender Bill then being considered as a blueprint. “If all Los Angeles can offer its returning servicemen is

Figure 6. The Mizrahis and their pup tent in Pershing Square. (UCLA Special Collections)

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a priority for a park bench, we are headed for trouble.” By dramatizing the housing crisis, Mizrahi “got help from heaven, so to speak,” wrote the conservative Times. “But that incident served more to point up the whole situation rather than to suggest a ready, practical solution.” The paper admonished both builders and labor for the price gouging that led to the “housing bottleneck.” The Hearst-owned Examiner felt that the housing shortage “is bordering on chaos” and advocated cutting through the red tape that was blocking the Xow of construction materials: “It would seem that a nation that could do so much for war could do as much for peace.”15 Early in 1946, President Truman appointed Wilson W. Wyatt, a committed New Dealer and former mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, to the newly created post of housing expediter. From this position, Wyatt unveiled the Veterans’ Emergency Housing Program (VEHP), to which he was commissioned by Truman to employ extensive means to combat the housing crisis for veterans. Aligning himself with the liberal forces within the Truman administration, Wyatt sought to apply wartime production techniques and price controls to fulWll that mandate. On February 8, the president and the expediter called for the construction of 2.7 million low- and moderate-income homes over a two-year period, supplemented by the enactment of the Wagner-Ellender-Taft legislation. Mayor Bowron met with Truman and Wyatt in Washington and declared that he would mobilize local industry, labor, and Wnance for the mass production of permanent, low-cost homes for veterans. On February 13, a special representative of Wyatt arrived in Los Angeles and announced a target of 270,000 permanent dwellings to be built during the next two years as the goal of Wyatt’s program for the metropolis.16 Established under Public Laws 292 and 336, the Veterans’ Program would convert surplus war housing into temporary housing. The federal government paid for the structures, material, and transportation of such units, and California and Los Angeles shared the cost (90 percent–10 percent) of site preparation. The CHA applied for $2.5 million from the state’s emergency veterans’ housing fund in February 1946. Four projects were initiated under the Veterans’ Program: the hundred-unit trailer park of PaciWc Park Annex, Rodger Young Village, Keppler Grove, and Basilone Homes (see Table 5 and Map 3).17 Antedating both the VEHP and the state’s programs, Wilmington Hall was converted from its original function as a dormitory for war workers. A $60,000 donation from the Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross to the CHA Wnanced the Wrst three hundred units

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of the project, which eventually contained 486 light-housekeeping units for veterans and their families. It was not yet completely remodeled when the project commenced occupation on November 23, 1945. Of the fourteen families arriving on that date, particularly thankful for their new apartment were Mr. and Mrs. Locke C. Jones and their sevenyear-old daughter. During the previous nights, they had been sleeping in the family sedan. The project was terminated in 1949.18 On January 16, 1946, Mayor Bowron and Howard Holtzendorff announced plans for a project to be located at the National Guard airport adjacent to GrifWth Park. Van GrifWth, heir of the park’s donor, who feared that the project might become permanent and detract from the park’s recreational purposes, legally challenged the proposed site. Monsignor O’Dwyer pleaded with GrifWth to reconsider his attempted injunction: We, as citizens of Los Angeles, have the greatest interest in preserving our city parks for their regular purposes. However, in this great housing crisis which faces our city today, forcing thousands of our returning veterans to sleep in the streets, automobiles, garages and other undesireable [sic] places, it is absolutely essential that emergency action be taken in the public interest to open the parks as temporary sites for emergency housing.

In the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Judge Henry M. Willis ruled against GrifWth, noting that parklands are often used for the temporary shelter and accommodation of citizens rendered homeless by public catastrophe. AfWrming this judgment in March 1947, the State Appeals Court expressed its agreement: “The parks of a community belong to its people.” Is there any law or argument, asked the court, “which would bar a municipality . . . from devoting park lands to the temporary housing of its homeless citizens? We can imagine none and we think that the question furnishes its own answer.”19 Comprised of 750 surplus naval Quonset huts, the 1,500-unit project was completed in short order and dedicated on April 27, 1946. It was named Rodger Young Village to commemorate PFC Rodger Young, posthumous recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The April 27 inaugural ceremonies were attended by Rodger Young’s mother, Mrs. Nicholas Young; local, state, and federal politicians; and an array of celebrities, headed by Jack Benny as master of ceremonies. Dinah Shore, Dennis Day, and Lena Horne sang “The Ballad of Rodger Young.”20

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Table 5. Public housing projects for veterans managed by the CHA Map reference

1 2 3 4 5

Name and location

Rodger Young Village (Griffith Park) Basilone Homes (Hansen Dam) Keppler Grove (307 East M St.) Pacific Park Annex (Third and Anderson) Wilmington Hall (435 Neptune St.)

Number

Type of units

1,500

Quonset huts

1,500

Surplus military housing Converted WAC barracks Trailers

84 100 486

Converted war worker dormitory

Source: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans (Los Angeles, 1949), passim.

Each of the project’s 750 twenty-foot-by-eighty-foot Quonset huts was divided into two housing units. Each dwelling contained a living room–kitchen and two bedrooms. With a capacity of about 6,000 residents, the project was serviced by a supermarket, pharmacy, newsstand, doctor’s and dentist’s ofWces, a pool hall, an ice cream parlor, and a baby shop. The village contained its own school (twenty-eight buildings with an enrollment of 977 in 1949), a community hall, a social hall, a public library branch, a post ofWce, adult education classes, a well-baby clinic, a volunteer Wre brigade, and ofWces for veterans’ organizations. An elected Resident Council was integrally involved in community life and project management. With the abatement of the acute housing crisis, Rodger Young Village was terminated in 1954.21 Keppler Grove, authorized by the CHA in March 1946, converted military housing into family units for veterans. The eighty-four-unit Keppler Grove—a former hundred-unit Women’s Army Corps barracks located in Banning Park, Wilmington—was named for Boatswain’s Mate Rinehardt Keppler, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who was killed on the USS San Francisco at Savo Island. The Wrst occupants, the family of Navy veteran Fred Ponce, arrived in June 1946. The project’s lease expired in 1949.22 In June 1946 the City Council appropriated $100,000 to the CHA for the construction of the 1,500-unit Basilone Homes in the San Fernando Valley near Hansen Dam. The project was named after Marine

Map 3. Location of veterans’ public housing projects managed by the CHA. Numbers correspond to the projects listed in Table 5.

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Sgt. John Basilone, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for service at Guadalcanal and was later killed at Iwo Jima. “While other cites still are wrangling bitterly over sites and costs,” the June 18 Times approvingly editorialized, “the city housing authority here has steadily been producing results. But,” the paper cautioned, “there is still much to be done.” In addition to the money provided by the city, $850,000 was to come from the state’s emergency housing appropriations fund and $3.5 million was to come from the federal government. FPHA funds for Basilone Homes were exhausted after 592 units were completed. As a result, in December, Nicola Giulii, president of the Housing Commission, threatened a lawsuit against the federal government for breach of contract. The cost of the remaining 908 units was assumed by the state. The project was scheduled for completion in May 1947; the Wrst 150 families arrived at the as yet unWnished project in December 1946. Basilone Homes was terminated in 1954.23 The progress made by the CHA’s administration of the Veterans’ Program in confronting the housing crisis can be contrasted to the disarray of the VEHP. The November 1946 Republican congressional victories were seen as a mandate for the elimination of wartime price controls, and they led Truman to order the expediter to investigate the decontrol of rents. Rather than comply, Wyatt tendered his resignation in a very terse two-sentence letter in December. Wyatt’s unceremonious departure was representative of Truman’s liberal-conservative merrygo-round where the expediter, wrote contemporary political critics Robert Allen and William Shannon, “was allowed to get a divorce [from the administration] on grounds of non-support.” Truman’s abandonment of Wyatt “might seem cold-blooded,” editorialized the Times, “especially to the American veterans who had been promised so much and whose hopes had been raised so high.” Still, “in the failure of the Wyatt housing program,” the paper commented, “the public has learned another lesson in the futility of a semicontrolled economy.” The VEHP and its goals were in shambles, with only 35,000 units of housing constructed during 1946. “That’s just 965,000 units short of the goal of one million units a year set by Wilson Wyatt,” observed the California Eagle.24 Veterans and Direct Action on Housing Severely affected by the housing shortage, returning veterans proved to be the most willing to engage in direct action and were one of the most visible, and at times the most radical, of public housing proponents.

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Some veterans’ organizations saw the free-market ideology espoused by the purveyors of private housing as a smoke screen to obscure the production and allocation of shelter. Henry Kraus reported this 1948 exchange between Representative Frederick C. Smith of Ohio and Wesley Pearce of the Veterans of Foreign Wars: SMITH:

You boys, after all, fought for freedom. You don’t want any socialistic regime in this country. Is that not true, Mr. Pearce? PEARCE: That is right. We want the houses. SMITH: I beg your pardon? PEARCE: In this case, we want the houses, and prior to the purchase of the houses . . . SMITH: (interposing) But you would like to be free from socialistic control, would you not? PEARCE: I think that’s true. I think the veterans would like to take over.25 Investment in commercial rather than residential construction and a consequent booming black market in building materials accented the Los Angeles housing shortage. In September 1946, Councilman John Roden, himself a veteran, introduced a resolution to initiate a veterans’ housing committee with power to halt commercial construction in favor of housing. Under pressure from veterans’ organizations, the City Council instructed the city attorney to draft an ordinance “to get homes instead of cocktail bars by halting non-essential commercial construction.” The American Veterans Committee, the Committee of 1,000 Veteran Home Buyers, and the Los Angeles Committee for Veterans’ Housing went one step further and sought, in the face of the housing shortage, a ban on all commercial construction. After assembling in Pershing Square every Saturday, the Committee for Veterans Housing went out to establish Xying picket lines around commercial construction sites.26 On January 10, 1947, a multiracial coalition of 1,500–2,000 veterans sponsored by the AVC pitched tents and camped overnight in Westlake Park to dramatize the housing shortage. One of the protester’s posters read “Fox holes in 1945—rat holes in 1947.” No speeches were made, though participants did speak with reporters. “We want to know,” demanded Norris Helford of the AVC, “why our country had no trouble furnishing us with guns and ammunition but now offers

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us only excuses instead of homes.” “There were better housing conditions in bombed out Hungary than there are here in Los Angeles,” said former B-29 pilot Ronald Scharf, who had been shot down during the war over Hungary. “We in the AVC hope that this ‘Big Sleep’ makes the government and private industry realize their failure to perform an elementary obligation,” stated Alvin Jackson, Los Angeles County AVC chairman. “If immediate action is not forthcoming, most of us will be sleeping out of doors in a short time.”27 One day later, 5,000 people from veterans’ and citizens’ organizations met at the Shrine Auditorium. In addition to advocating a motorcade to Sacramento in order to present their demands to Governor Warren, the AVC offered a “Master Housing Plan.” Among other points, the plan demanded a declaration of a housing emergency by the mayor and county authorities, a halt to large-scale commercial construction, immediate funding for temporary housing projects, the turning over of all military barracks to the city or county for use as temporary housing projects, and the issuance of local bonds to supplement state and federal urban redevelopment and slum clearance. The AVC also insisted that there be no segregation or discrimination in all housing.28 The motorcade—dubbed the Veterans’ Housing Caravan—took place March 23–24, 1947, and was organized through the State Legislative Conference headed by leftist activist Reuben Borough. The contingent from the southern part of the state was sponsored by the AVC, the CHC, Veterans of Foreign Wars, United Negro and Allied Veterans of America, the League of Women Voters, the American Legion, the Nisei War Vets, and the CIO veterans’ committee. Agreeing to be marshals for the caravan were Los Angeles City Councilman Parley Parker Christiansen, celebrity Lena Horne, and California Eagle publisher Charlotta Bass, as well as several other representatives of labor and veterans organizations. About three hundred veterans and their supporters slept on the Xoor of the governor’s hall to dramatize the housing plight of veterans and then presented their demands the next day to individual state senators and assemblymen. The veterans called for state appropriations of $100 million for low-cost housing projects, state appropriations of $35 million to convert military barracks to temporary housing, state rent controls, and an end to restrictive covenants. According to Harper Poulson, chairman of the Los Angeles County Caravan Committee, such demands were neither radical nor overwhelming; rather, they were “just the crumbs of the program that the veterans, labor and civic organizations of the state asked on housing.”29

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Housing: Public or Private? The extent and depth of the postwar housing shortage posed the question as to whether there would have to be both public and private housing markets. The California State Reconstruction and Re-employment Commission warned that a solution to the housing crisis “might involve public housing, should private industry prove unable to meet the need.” Speaking to the Committee of 1,000 Veteran Home Buyers in February 1947, Frank Wilkinson advocated popular agitation: “If the American people once get together and demand their American right to a decent home, they will get a decent home, and those powerful, selWsh lobbies [of the private housing market] will receive the condemnation and ridicule they so richly deserve.” In August 1947, ofWcers of the NAHB met with Mayor Bowron to discuss the housing shortage in Los Angeles and were soundly rebuked for their failure to deal with the crisis. “Left wingers,” grumbled NAHB president Edwin Carr after the meeting, “who are trying to discredit private enterprise, think houses are high-priced because they want the homes supplied by the government.”30 The activism of organized labor, veterans, minorities, women, and civic organizations that had been engendered by the housing crisis gave impetus to expanding the public housing program. Their demands found a very sympathetic response from many urban politicians. Mayor Bowron, for example, was president of the National Conference of Mayors (founded in 1943 to lobby for increased federal aid to cities). He saw public housing as indispensable in addressing the postwar housing shortage. When asked in 1947 whether he supported the Taft-EllenderWagner Bill, Bowron replied that “unless private industry does something fast for rental housing, I’m going for it hook, line and sinker.”31 In 1947, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission (CPC), in cooperation with the CHA and the Mayor’s Emergency Housing Committee, prepared a report on the city’s housing needs. The report stated that there was an immediate need for 123,159 units—a Wgure expected to increase to 150,847 by 1948. At the current rate of home building, according to the commission, it would take over seven years to reach this goal, during which time the need would undoubtedly increase because of population growth, structural deterioration, and the clearance of units for freeway construction. Moreover, building activity was overwhelmingly geared toward owner-occupied homes and not toward rental units, even though the city was 68 percent tenant-occupied. In addition, veterans had, in a special census, expressed a preference for rental housing. The CPC report highlighted the housing distress of the

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city while questioning the type of city that the private housing industry was willing to construct.32 Proposition 14 With Wscal limitations on the ability of the City of Los Angeles to adequately address the housing crisis and with the containment of federal public housing appropriations in Washington, political activism was increasingly directed toward the state of California. On December 6, 1947, the CHC sponsored a meeting at the First Unitarian Church on the question “Shall we promote a state housing initiative and referendum?” Speakers included Robert Alexander of the CPC, Assemblyman Vernon Kilpatrick, Frank Wilkinson of the CHA, and CHC chairman Monsignor O’Dwyer. They discussed the topic with representatives from the AVC, the Federated Women’s Clubs, the Japanese-American Citizens League, the AFL, the CIO, the Urban League, the NAACP, and the YWCA. From this meeting emerged a drive to place an initiative for a California Housing Authority on the November 1948 ballot. On December 12, O’Dwyer announced that petitions for the initiative would begin circulating in February.33 The NAACP, the National Negro Congress, the Los Angeles Building Trades Council, the California State Federation of Labor, the California CIO Council, and the PCA promptly endorsed the initiative. The qualifying signatures were obtained by volunteers instead of by paid petitioner gatherers. By May 1948, 198,816 signatures had been collected in Southern California; a statewide total of 205,000 was required by June 2 to place the measure on the November ballot. The AVC had brought in 29,263 signatures; the CIO produced 13,957; resident councils in the public housing projects gathered 10,241; 8,611 were from the PCA; more than 7,000 were from the AFL; 5,403 signatures were from the Community Services Organization; 4,153 were from the NAACP; and more than 2,500 were from the American Jewish Congress. The ADA obtained 130 signatures.34 The housing initiative qualiWed as Proposition 14 on the November 1948 state ballot. Its purpose was to provide decent housing for those excluded from the private housing market. To do so, 100,000 lowand moderate-rent housing units would be constructed by local housing authorities and private nonproWt housing associations. Housing production would be funded by a $100 million revolving fund to make loans to the local agencies. An assistance fund drawn on the State General Fund, not to exceed $25 million per year, would guarantee costs

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of operation to those localities. The program would be coordinated by a State Housing Agency consisting of Wve nonpaid commissioners appointed by the governor, a general counsel, three deputies, and an administrative staff. The agency would provide technical assistance to local agencies, make surveys and studies, publish reports, disseminate information on housing, and cooperate with other government departments on problems connected with housing.35 Apparently the vigor and enthusiasm of the volunteer effort that advocated Proposition 14 could not match the organizational, advertising, and spending power of the opposition. William Ross, manager of the statewide “No on 14” campaign, reported that his operation was bankrolled by home builders Fritz Burns and Spiros Ponty and several other “very active, very wealthy men.” The Committee for Home Protection, chaired by conservative Democrat Frederick C. Dockweiler, coordinated the Southern California “No on 14” campaign. “It is a left wing Communist scheme,” read one of the committee’s Xyers, by which “many good citizens [had been] duped.” The initiative would result in “Wve dictators” using tax dollars “to grease a political machine” that would introduce “the Hitler-Stalin housing program into America.” The upshot of the proposition was “it makes you pay somebody else’s rent.” “The real estate lobby was absolutely ruthless,” recalled Proposition 14 organizer and CHA employee Drayton Bryant.36 The measure was defeated by a statewide margin of 2–1 that November. A participant in the Proposition 14 campaign, Guy Havard Raner Jr., later wrote in his MA thesis: Your author, then an optimistic young veteran eager to create a utopia overnight, plunged into the campaign, got signatures on petitions, passed out literature and watched, wide-eyed, as real estate boards, the Los Angeles Times, and others rolled up a counter campaign, using all of the anti-housing slogans I thought had fallen into disrepute.

According to Raner, the initiative’s defeat was due in no small part to its powerful and vociferous opposition.37 The Crisis Continues . . . In January 1947, the FPHA announced that the nine CHA projects, which at that time were being used as veterans’ housing, would be reconverted to their original purpose of serving low-income households. The management supervisor of the FPHA assured public housing tenants that they need not fear immediate evictions because the reversion

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would be gradual, lasting from one to Wve years. Yet in April, the evictions of families with more than a $2,970 in annual income were scheduled. The Inter-Project Council—representing 3,400 families who were CHA tenants—successfully opposed this plan, contending that there was no private housing available for the evictees. The answer to the housing crisis, according to the council’s president Charles Kosloff, was “more federal housing” rather than evictions. In July, the Inter-Project Council again opposed a “forced-transfer plan” whereby excessive-income tenants from the CHA’s ten original projects would be transferred to the federal projects of Rodger Young Village, Basilone Homes, Channel Heights, Banning Homes, Dana Strand Village, and Normont Terrace. An agreement between the CHA and the InterProject Council left Wfty-two families earning more than $5,000 per annum on the eviction list.38 In April 1949, the proposed construction of the police department’s Parker Center in Little Tokyo threatened to evict some 2,000 lowincome Japanese, Filipinos, and African Americans living in the area. Organized by the First and San Pedro Tenants’ Committee, the Nisei Progressives, and the Independent Progressive Party (IPP), the evictees demanded a municipally funded public housing program and a halt to construction of new civic center buildings until that housing program was completed. “If the city can construct a police administration building, it can build homes,” asserted John Forrester, Weld organizer of the IPP. CHA executive director Howard Holtzendorff cautioned that there was “little chance” for public housing in the absence of the passage of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill currently under consideration by Congress. Mayor Bowron asked for a $5,000 appropriation, which the City Council unanimously approved, to survey and determine the exact housing needs of the area, and he charged the CHA with managing the condemned properties and coordinating the rehousing process. Forrester opined that Bowron had merely handed a “hot potato” to the CHA. He and Art Takei, of the Nisei Progressives, questioned the ability of the CHA, still backlogged with veterans’ applications, to deal effectively with the Little Tokyo displacees. Forrester was annoyed that the CHA’s Roy Patterson and Frank Wilkinson discussed only generalities rather than speciWc proposals.39 Anticipating the 1949 Housing Act, the CHC and the CHA sponsored guided tours of the slums in order to solidify support for the city’s public housing efforts. This popular mobilization was the apex

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of social democratic reform. One of the stops on a slum tour led by Frank Wilkinson was a former house of prostitution located near Pico Gardens. A three-story clapboard house consisting of “cribs” with one window and one door facing the verandah in the style of a southern cathouse, the building had been condemned and removed from the tax roles. Yet the owner continued renting (while paying no taxes), one family per crib, to black and Mexican American former defense workers who could not Wnd other accommodations. Wilkinson had residents come out of their apartments to tell what it was like to live there. He then took his group to nearby Pico Gardens to show what life could be like, once slums were replaced by public housing.40 “The Mark of the Beast” Although the Red-baiting of public housing had slackened during the war owing to unity in the face of the national emergency, it resumed on an intensiWed scale in the Cold War atmosphere. The California

Figure 7. Frank Wilkinson leads a group of PTA members on a “slum tour” in the Bunker Hill district. (Photographer: Leonard Nadel; Los Angeles Public Library)

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Un-American Activities Committee (CUAC) instigated the most virulent and widely broadcast slurs of this genre to appear locally. This committee, chaired by State Senator Jack B. Tenney from 1941 until 1949 and known as the Tenney Committee, was noted for its inquisitional hearings, of which “prosecution rather than investigation was the theme.” Tenney’s unpopular tactics and legislative program prompted his 1949 resignation. Under its new chairman, Hugh M. Burns—“who does not appear to have the fanaticism or personal ambition of Tenney,” according to Edward Barrett—CUAC would play a central role in the public housing war of the 1950s.41 In December 1945, State Senator Tenney, speaking at a Republican luncheon club, charged that the Los Angeles Citizens’ Housing Council was organized by Communists. Sara Boynoff of the Daily News reported that Tenney’s “attempts to paint the Citizens Housing Council in bright red, and to present its president, Msgr. Thomas J. O’Dwyer as the ‘dupe’ of communists, went over with a dull thud today.” The paper editorially queried the motivation for such an attack, concluding that “if we are to accept the deWnition of a communist as one who wants a roof over his head at a price he can afford to pay we shall have to admit there are a lot of us commies Xoating around these days.” After receiving a number of complaints protesting the Tenney Committee’s slurs against O’Dwyer, the committee’s 1949 Fifth Report acknowledged that although O’Dwyer’s name and social activism were frequently appropriated by Communist propagandists, he had never been cited in the committee’s published reports.42 CUAC readily connected housing activism with un-Americanism. The Tenney Committee cited Reuben Borough for his support of the “obviously revolutionary” Veterans’ Housing Caravan to Sacramento. “If you called for that caravan march,” Borough reminisced ironically in his oral history, “you were obviously going to overthrow the government in Sacramento—no question about that.” In a 1948 state senate hearing held in Los Angeles investigating housing, Tenney snapped at one witness, AVC spokesman William Belton, that he thought Belton was a Communist. “Jack,” replied Belton, “I don’t give a damn what you think. I only wish you were concerned with housing for the people.”43 In the face of the postwar housing shortage, whose effects were felt most acutely in the African American community, the overuse of Redbaiting resulted in its ridicule. For the Sentinel, an African American weekly, socialism was a nonissue: If what was meant by socialism was the ability of “Negroes to secure housing it is a safe bet that most

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Negroes will be quite willing to accept some form of that socialism in return for a roof over their heads.” Highlighting a statement by the chief assistant city health ofWcer that Los Angeles must either make immediate plans for low-income housing or face worsening slums, the California Eagle editorialized in 1948: Slums? In the City of Los Angeles? Aw, there ain’t no such thing. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce has said so, for years and years. Anybody that says there are slums in LA is just a “Red,” and ought to go back where he came from. . . . The G.I.s, who had been promised so much upon their return from Wghting for democracy, are thoroughly disgusted.44

Red-baiting, in the late 1940s, appeared as a somewhat ambiguous means to circumscribe popular activism. The equation of public housing and socialism was a central strategy in the unsuccessful campaign to defeat the Taft-Ellender-Wagner (T-E-W) Bill. Representative Frederick C. Smith (R-Ohio), in debate over the bill, condemned public housing—“political ownership of human shelter”—as “the mark of the beast. Nothing could be more communistic.” In contrast, the coauthorship of Senator Robert Taft of Ohio—“Mr. Republican”—of the T-E-W Bill was a continual source of mirth for public housing proponents when confronted by Red-baiting tactics. “American private enterprise,” said Taft, “the freest in the world, has never eliminated slums, and I see no reason to think it ever will.” In February 1949, Herbert Nelson of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) said: “I doubt whether it is wise to emphasize socialism too much. The man in the street is not afraid of socialism.”45 Project Life News coverage by the papers that broadcast the viewpoints of liberals and the Left often viewed the public housing projects as a gauge by which to judge the social, economic, and political currents of the larger society. The ways public housing tenants dealt with racism, became activists, celebrated Negro History Week, coped with the Xuctuating Los Angeles economy, or supported Henry Wallace and the IPP were considered worthy of elucidation and discussion.46 The veterans’ housing project at Rodger Young Village was considered a microcosm of Los Angeles in which the left-liberal vision of the postwar world might be validated or found wanting. It was a

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racially integrated project, in which the necessity of cooperative living was emphasized and enforced by the housing shortage. The village embodied this spirit in the watchwords written on the masthead of the Rodger Young News: “equality, harmony, democracy—community, home, nation.” Political divisions within the village ran deep. The Left was represented by Sidney Burke, Los Angeles editor of the People’s World, and his wife Libby Burke, an energetic community activist. Both had a reputation for getting things done and being capable leaders. On the right was the conservative Knights of Columbus.47 At the beginning of October 1946, John S. Wood and Ernie Adamson of the U.S. Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), working with the concurrent hearings of Tenney’s CUAC, brought to the attention of Mayor Bowron reports of a “known communist” who had been assigned a Quonset hut in Rodger Young Village. Sidney Burke was found to be ineligible to live in that housing project as he was a “non-veteran,” though he had over three years of wartime service and had received a combat bar for direct action with the merchant marines. On October 4 the CHA, at the behest of Mayor Bowron, asked Burke, his wife Libby, and their two small children to leave Rodger Young Village.48 The CHA then offered the Burke family an apartment in the Channel Heights project. The City Council, Mayor Bowron, and the popular press asked why, particularly given the housing shortage in Los Angeles, the CHA would allow this subversive family into any of its projects. “I object strenuously,” stated Councilman Leonard E. Timberlake, “to housing the Burkes in any place built by taxpayers’ money.” On October 16, the City Council voted 11–1 to demand that the Burkes be expelled from public housing. The sole dissenting vote came from Councilman Carl Rasmussen, who charged that the council’s eviction resolution was “part of a nationwide program to undermine public conWdence in the public housing program.” On October 23, the CHA, through its veterans’ advisory committee, proposed that loyalty statements be incorporated in future dwelling applications.49 The Burke incident—the denial of housing on the basis of political belief—set a chilling precedent for public housing tenants. “What would happen to freedom of expression in the projects with such a threat hovering over everyone?” asked Henry Kraus. “Who could feel secure?” The National Maritime Union condemned the Burkes’ eviction as “this discriminatory, witch-hunting action of City Council,” which “does not solve the problem of housing for veterans.” Leota and Arnold Fantl

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wrote to the City Council from Rodger Young Village that the Burkes’ eviction from Channel Heights would “cause many people here to fear to speak up because they are afraid of being thrown out of the project.” “It is very hard to understand,” they added, “how the Los Angeles housing problem can be solved by the eviction process.”50 At the end of October, Councilman Davenport introduced a resolution that $2,500 be appropriated by the City Council’s public heath and welfare committee to investigate thoroughly both the Burke incident and “the promotion of Communism in Public Housing projects.” The Burke case, read Davenport’s resolution, “has heightened the conviction of many citizens, whose money builds Federal Housing, that projects are targets of Communistic propaganda and fertile Welds for cultivating support by the subversive groups who would change the American way of life to that of the Communism of Russia.” A subsequent legal opinion by the city attorney revealed that the council had overstepped its authority in calling for the Burkes’ eviction and that loyalty oaths were not legal means to qualify or disqualify applicants for public housing occupancy.51 The African American press continued a critical, though not oppositional, assessment of the CHA in order to expand the policies of progressive integration initiated during the war. Noted were the persistence of several public housing projects that were nearly mono-racial and the fact that black personnel were being bypassed for CHA promotions. Racial tensions in the projects were highlighted by an incident in Basilone Homes in July 1948. David Anderson, a white tenant, shot and wounded Mrs. Willie Nelson, African American vice president of the Basilone Recreation Association, and CHA employee Nathaniel Harding. In the wake of the shooting, residents circulated petitions requesting that the CHA management reafWrm its nondiscrimination policy: “We, Negro and white, fought together to destroy fascism. . . . We can learn to live together by the same united action.” One month after this incident, the Sentinel published a photo essay emphasizing the racial harmony at Basilone Homes.52 What started out to be a fathers’ club at Pico Gardens was transformed into a parents’ club, and from there it superseded the tenants’ council. Oliver Haskell, the manager of Pico Gardens, recalled the Wrst of the scheduled monthly meetings of the fathers’ club as a “Wasco.” Though seventy-Wve fathers had promised to attend the meeting, a total of three fathers showed up. They were met by Haskell and the janitor (representing the CHA), three representatives from outside social

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agencies, and Wve women to serve coffee and refreshments. Haskell was at a loss for what to do until one of the women advised him that a weekly meeting (easier to remember than a monthly meeting) of parents would include project housewives, who would voice their own concerns as well as encourage their husbands to attend. From there the organization took off. There were family disputes over which spouse would look after the children while the other attended the parents’ club. It was, according to Haskell, “the damnedest tenant organization that ever existed in the Housing Authority—I mean effective, really doing things.” Haskell vividly remembers Vincent Chavez, president of the Parents’ Club, authoritatively telling the professionals in a meeting of youth-serving agencies in Boyle Heights how the Parents’ Club had succeeded in working with the youth of the project. Haskell recalled that “it was just a great experience to come to the point where a tenants’ organization was functioning to the real beneWt of not only the project but to the community as a whole.”53 The 1949 Housing Act The postwar extension of the public housing program was vociferously opposed by “one of the most powerful and versatile lobbies ever to descend on Washington,” according to Tris CofWn in the Nation. Included were the NAHB, the NAREB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Saving and Loan League, the National Association of Retail Lumber Dealers, and the Mortgage Bankers Association. According to Herbert U. Nelson, executive vice president of NAREB, “We have what is called a real estate lobby. It consists of 18 trade associations interested in construction and real estate. These trade associations have several hundred thousand members. We correlate our efforts very well and put up the best battle we know how.”54 Legislation to extend the suspended public housing appropriations of the 1937 Wagner Act—the Wagner-Ellender Bill, renamed Wrst the Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill and Wnally the Taft-Ellender-Wagner (T-E-W) Bill—had originated in the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Development during the Wnal year of the war. The bill proposed an extension of public housing combined with a “predominantly residential” urban redevelopment program. The real estate lobby rejected public housing but appreciated the merits of an appropriately tailored urban redevelopment program offered by the legislation. Public housing proponents, by contrast, saw urban redevelopment as subordinate to the humanitarian goals of public housing. “The power of a small lobby

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of builders and mortgage lenders,” wrote Charles Abrams of the 1946 congressional debacle that contained the measure in committee, “was again shown to be superior to the voice of the veterans, the housing needs of millions of workers, and the national welfare.” The bill never reached the Xoor of the House until 1948, primarily through the efforts of Congressman Jesse Wolcott (R-Michigan), in whom the “real estate lobby had a reliable friend.” This logjam would Wnally be broken with Harry Truman’s successful 1948 presidential campaign.55 President Truman continually attacked the “do-nothing” Republican Eightieth Congress and its unwillingness to enact legislation that would alleviate the postwar housing crisis. In July 1948, the president called a “turnip day,” an extended session of the Eightieth Congress, to try and force the passage of the T-E-W Bill. Twenty-six national organizations, including the AFL, the CIO, the Conference of Mayors, and organizations of veterans, African Americans, women, and churches, provided intense popular pressure on Congress in advocacy of the T-E-W Bill. Senator Charles Tobey, a liberal Republican from New Hampshire, who had been frustrated by a parallel housing bill with no public housing provisions introduced by Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), exclaimed: “Damn the legislative torpedoes. Let’s go ahead and give the country what the American people want.” The turnip-day session ended without action on the T-E-W Bill, which provided a cornerstone for Truman’s presidential campaign.56 As the 1948 Democratic presidential candidate, Truman campaigned heavily on the failure, “at the behest of the real estate lobby,” of the Republican Party to pass the T-E-W public housing bill. Truman declared that whereas the 1928 Republican campaign slogan had been “2 cars in every garage,” it was now “2 families in every garage.” Truman’s unexpected November victory over Republican, Progressive Party, and States’ Rights opponents served to consolidate New Deal reforms and usher in Truman’s “Fair Deal.” The Roosevelt coalition of organized labor, minorities, and women was central to his victory. “Labor did it,” Truman acknowledged.57 The T-E-W Bill was resubmitted to the Eighty-First Congress, Truman’s reelection having demonstrated “the overwhelming support of the public.” When the bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee in February 1949, the Times expressed its editorial fear of a massive and growing housing bureaucracy that would control the free will of the citizenry: “Who wouldn’t like to have Santa Claus for a landlord?” The president wrote a June 17 letter to Speaker of the House Sam

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Rayburn that was intended to expose the real estate lobby’s opposition to the T-E-W Bill’s public housing provisions. Truman listed the broad range of popular support by labor, veterans, women, church, and civil rights groups for T-E-W, supporters who, he said, “have seen through the charges of socialism.” The president contrasted this to the opposition of “the real estate lobby, shortsighted and utterly selWsh, [which] continues to cry ‘socialism’ in a last effort to smother the real facts and real issues which this bill is designed to meet.” Passing the Senate 57–13 and the House 227–186, the T-E-W Bill became the 1949 Housing Act and was signed into law by Truman on July 15, 1949. The act was considered a major popular victory by liberals and the Left.58 The 1949 Housing Act established a national housing policy that declared federal policy to be “the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.” Title I, administered by the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA), authorized federal loan guarantees and capital grants to local public agencies to eliminate substandard housing through large-scale land assembly and slum clearance—“urban redevelopment.” Title III, overseen by the Public Housing Administration (PHA, an HHFA subsidiary), authorized federal contributions and loans to local housing authorities for the construction of 810,000 units of public housing over the next six years. The legislation removed restrictions on the disposition of remaining public war and veterans’ housing projects. Called “a masterpiece of political juggling” by Alan Wolfe, the 1949 Housing Act was a compromise between public housing advocates and the real estate lobby.59 The 1949 Public Housing Contract in Los Angeles Following the 1945 municipal elections, Bowron’s governing coalition had moved sharply rightward as the mayor pursued postwar urban growth. Forsaking his former political allies of liberals, the Left, and minorities, his coalition now embraced conservative business forces and provided them with a direct conduit into city politics. Bowron “made his peace” with Norman Chandler’s newspaper empire to the extent that, according to Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Times reporter Carlton Williams could conWde to a sympathetic councilman that although Bowron might be a politically obstinate son of a bitch, “He’s our son of a bitch.” Bowron’s unwillingness to face issues of police brutality and his 1948 appointment of Philip Rea to the city’s Community Redevelopment Commission led to his political abandonment by leftist

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newspapers like the People’s World and the California Eagle. Though endorsing Bowron, the liberal Sentinel was not shy in listing his shortcomings to its African American readership. The Los Angeles CIO, however, rallied to his 1949 reelection campaign.60 With his opponent in the 1949 election, the AFL-supported Lloyd Aldrich, making a strong showing on the Eastside and in South-Central Los Angeles, Bowron touted his advocacy of an extensive public housing program and his appointment of an African American, George A. Beavers Jr., as a CHA commissioner. He warned minority voters to beware of those who wished to “turn the clock back . . . to the years of slums and inadequate housing for teeming masses.” Though he had been endorsed by the Sentinel, the paper editorialized that Bowron had lost by a landslide in the black districts because African Americans were, as working people, more sympathetic to the AFL-supported Aldrich. Be that as it may, according to the paper, Bowron had been reelected and the task at hand, for blacks, was to continue to press the issues of police brutality, housing policy, and fair employment. Thus, the political stage was set for the extension of the public housing program in Los Angeles.61 In June 1949, PHA commissioner John Taylor Egan informed the CHA that 10,000 units of public housing had been earmarked for Los Angeles, pending the outcome of the T-E-W Bill. On August 8, Bowron addressed the City Council and asked that body to authorize the CHA to enter into a federal contract to construct 10,000 units of public housing. This contract would allow the removal of CHA veterans’ temporary housing projects such as Rodger Young Village and Basilone Homes, as well as the rehousing of the families displaced by the new police facilities in Little Tokyo, by the Department of Water and Power expansion on Bunker Hill, and by the freeway construction program. The $100 million of federal money for the program going into the local economy would beneWt everyone. The mayor assured the opponents of public housing that there would be no competition with the private housing market. Bowron pointed out that there were an estimated 48,000 low-income families living in substandard housing in Los Angeles and that the proposed contract would allow only 20 percent of this need to be addressed. The council gave its unanimous approval to the ordinance agreement, which Bowron signed that afternoon. The mayor, Councilman Ed Davenport, and CHA executivedirector Howard Holtzendorff Xew to Washington on August 15 to secure the 10,000-unit public housing contract.62

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Conclusion The postwar struggle over the extension of public housing centered on the terrain of the welfare state. The real estate lobby wanted a quick return to a “free” market in housing and tried to discredit opponents with anti-Communism and Red-baiting. In the process, organized labor, veterans, minorities, and women, who were to pay the costs of the free market with a housing shortage, responded with a drive for an expanded public housing program and its institution within the Fair Deal. The passage of the 1949 Housing Act and its promise of redeveloped cities was seen as a popular victory by liberals and the Left. As part of a progressive welfare state, the public housing program and its companion policy of urban redevelopment pointed to a future in which slums and blight would be eliminated and U.S. cities would grow in an orderly and planned way. The Sentinel was editorially pleased that after nearly four years of being bottled up in Washington, the TaftEllender-Wagner Bill was now the 1949 Housing Act, but it nevertheless (correctly) predicted that public housing opponents would “get busy on the local level and to do the best [they] can do to sabotage slum clearance and public housing proposals.”63

CHAPTER 4

The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”: Public Housing and the Red Scare

ith the opening of the 1950s, the public housing program seemed on its way to becoming an entrenched and established welfarestate institution in Los Angeles. In November 1950, the City Council approved the sites of the proposed 10,000 public housing units, and by early 1951, the CHA was rapidly moving ahead on the fulWllment of the contract by hiring architects and arranging site clearance. By the end of 1951, however, an insurgent City Council was threatening to cancel the contract with the federal government. In 1952 and 1953, the CHA underwent a right-wing attack, culminating in what the September 6, 1952, Los Angeles Mirror called the “headline-happy public housing war.” Under the tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy from Wisconsin, which would be immortalized as McCarthyism, public housing was equated with Communism, socialism, and a general unAmericanism. The hotly contested Los Angeles mayoral campaign of 1953 focused on this issue and resulted in the election of a mayor who promised to rid Los Angeles of its public housing contract.

W

Site Selection On December 9, 1949, the CHA had entered into a preliminary loan contract with federal authorities in order to conduct site studies and to employ engineers, architects, and real estate appraisers. Working closely with the City Health Department and the City Planning Department, the CHA initially considered seventy-three possible sites as locations 103

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for the 10,000 units of public housing. Frank Wilkinson told the People’s World that the CHA intended to build the Wrst two or three projects on vacant land in order to house those displaced by subsequent slum clearance: “We do not intend to cause any hardship or force anyone out on the street with no place to go.”1 Site selection proved to be a discordant process. At a September 1950 meeting at the Jordan Downs Auditorium, about two hundred homeowners from South-Central Los Angeles facing eminent-domain proceedings voiced their concerns about selected sites. They did not want to be uprooted from the homes they had worked hard to buy and forced to live in a housing project. CHA offers on their properties were so low that many families could not Wnd an affordable home elsewhere. With the segregated housing market, there were further limitations on African American and Mexican American homebuyers. The Sentinel wrote that although CHA spokesman Frank Wilkinson tried to alleviate their apprehensions, “his explanations were greeted by impassioned objections.”2 Proposition 10 on the November 7, 1950, California ballot indicated the antagonism felt by the electorate toward public housing as the private housing market was beginning to boom. The measure called for all future public housing proposals to be approved by public referendum in the city or county affected. Projects that, like the Los Angeles program, were subject to an existing contract with the federal government were exempted. Though opposed by both Democratic and Republican politicians, Californians narrowly voted in favor of Proposition 10, which became article 34 of the California Constitution. On November 22, 1950, despite complaints by affected homeowners as well as by business groups, the City Council voted 12–1 to approve the acquisition of the proposed sites. Councilman John C. Holland was the sole dissenter.3 On December 29, 1950, C. R. Drake, secretary-treasurer of the Monterey Woods Improvement Association and resident of the proposed Rose Hill Courts extension site, and Bertha Withers, a resident of the proposed Elysian Park Heights site (Chavez Ravine), Wled a complaint against the City of Los Angeles in Superior Court. The plaintiffs sought a restraining order that would prevent the CHA from proceeding with its program on the selected sites, arguing that (1) in the absence of detailed descriptions submitted to the CPC, public buildings were a violation of the city charter, and (2) the selected sites, though approved by the City Council, needed prior approval by the CPC. In March 1951,

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Judge Julius V. Patrosso dismissed the suit and ruled that the City Council’s site approval was indeed legal and that the City Charter clause was applicable only to city-owned public buildings and not to those of the CHA (a state agency). Appealed to the California Supreme Court, Patrosso’s judgment was afWrmed in April 1952.4 Just prior to the announcement of Drake’s intended litigation, twentyWve homeowners formed the Montecito Property Owners for Public Housing and issued a statement: “We feel strongly that the property owners of the neighborhood should accept as their civil and social responsibility the encouragement of public housing, such as the Rose Hill Courts extension.” As the Drake lawsuit proceeded, the City Council received numerous letters, postcards, and telegrams overwhelmingly in support of the CHA’s program. The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance wrote, “It is almost unbelievable that, in 20th Century America, there are those who would argue in favor of retaining the slums and substandard homes which infest our city.” The director of the Golden West Lodge wrote that the need for public housing would be obvious to anyone “except perhaps some one with selWsh Wnancial motives or class and race prejudice.” Joan Rogers had recently been on a slum tour and was convinced of the need for more public housing in Los Angeles. “I am very glad to know,” she wrote the council, “that you are backing up the City Housing Authorities [sic] plans and sincerely hope you will continue to do so in spite of the inXuential opposition.”5 In order to preempt future legal attacks, the CHA requested the CPC to grant conditional use for nine of the selected sites. Beginning on April 16, 1951, the CPC held a series of public hearings, and by May 20, it had approved eight of the sites. The CPC decisions were then appealed to the City Council—both by the CHA and by affected property owners—which resulted in a marathon four-day public hearing. Site proponents included organized labor, veterans’ organizations, and civic groups. Objections to the speciWc locations of the projects as well as to public housing in general were voiced by many residents who lived in or near the proposed sites, the Realty Board, the Apartment House Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and Pro-America. The director of the Montecito Hills Improvement Association made an impassioned appeal to the council to guard the gate and not “permit the entry of a Trojan Horse [public housing] which will destroy our American ideal of American privately owned homes.” On June 26, the council, by a vote of 10–5 (the required two-thirds majority), overruled the CPC, giving the green light to all nine projects selected by the CHA.6

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In a letter of August 29, 1951, U.S. Senator Richard M. Nixon suggested to the secretary of the Montecito Hills Improvement Association that the “Defense Housing Act,” which would permit local communities to disapprove or cancel speciWc public housing projects, might be a feasible way to kill the Los Angeles program. In turn, Councilman Holland called the attention of the council to the letter and asked the city attorney to outline “the rights of the Council thereunder.” Surveying the Congressional Record, the City Attorney’s OfWce found no mention of a “Defense Housing Act” but concluded that Nixon was probably referring to a rider to the Independent OfWces Appropriations Act, which held that the PHA could not authorize a contract where a public housing project either had been or might be rejected in the future by local governments. The City Attorney’s OfWce issued the opinion that the “proviso does not apply to the local situation,” as the Los Angeles projects had already been authorized.7 The Council’s Revolt “When I think of those public buildings going up on these rolling, virgin hills,” declared Councilman Holland, the sole dissenter in the council’s November 1950 site approval vote, “I revolt.” Holland’s revulsion was to be shared by Councilmen George P. Cronk, Earle D. Baker, J. Win Austin, and Harold A. Henry, who, as of the June 1951 site conWrmation, constituted the anti–public housing bloc. On July 1, public housing opponent Charles Navarro assumed the seat of G. Vernon Bennett, and the bloc was now 6–9. Councilman Ed J. Davenport, who had been a staunch proponent of public housing, announced to the council on November 19 that he was now opposed to the program because of its possible costs to the city. The sudden reversal of his public housing advocacy was regarded with skepticism. “It was the general consensus,” wrote contemporary observer Richard Baisden, “that Davenport’s change of heart had not been based entirely on principle.” At 7–8, the anti-housers now made up a sizable minority on the council.8 On December 3, Councilman Harold Harby announced to an audience of about six hundred people in the Council Chambers that, like Davenport, he too had seen the light. Harby had spent the previous sleepless night considering the public housing situation and wrestling with his conscience. With “his face drawn from evident concern over the matter,” wrote the Times, Harby condemned public housing as “the

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creeping cancer of socialism [which] will bring us to stateism . . . and social decay.” The antihousing forces now had an 8–7 majority on the City Council, which proceeded to vote to reconsider its instructions— approved the previous Friday—giving the CHA blanket approval to proceed with the federal contract. “My strong impression is that powerful, selWsh interests changed Harby’s vote which turned the tide against this big housing project,” County Supervisor John Anson Ford wrote

Figure 8. This panel from a Daily News editorial cartoon, reprinted in the Citizen on April 18, 1952, depicts the beginning of the public housing war in the City Council. (Courtesy Citizen, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO)

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to Mayor Bowron. “I seldom have seen a more disturbing about-face than Harold Harby’s. I hope you do not like that kind of politics.”9 Both proponents and opponents of public housing voiced their opinions to the City Council of that body’s policy reversal. The former were represented by labor unions, the clergy, and civic organizations. Frank Neill of the Independent Committee of Volunteer Precinct Workers sent a telegram to the council requesting they approve the federal project as a Christmas present for the needy of Los Angeles: “THE GOOD NAME OF OUR CITY AND HUMAN WELFARE ARE IN THE BALANCE AGAINST THE SELFISH INTEREST OF THOSE WHO WOULD PROFIT OF HUMAN MISERY PLEASE VOTE FOR HUMANITY.”

D. M. Morandini, director of a nonproWt educational organization, wrote that it was “disgusting” that the real estate lobby could “inXuence former public spirited councilmen to switch votes to their favor. . . . I hope that the rubbish of ‘creeping cancer of socialism’ and ‘stateism’ will not befog your clear thinking on this issue.” The ofWcers and members of Carpenters Local Union sent a telegram to Councilman Kenneth Hahn stating that organized labor was 100 percent behind the public housing program: “DONT BE MISLED AS SOME OF YOUR COLLEAGUES HAVE BEEN BY BIG MONEY INTERESTS.”10 Savings and loan associations, realty boards, home builders, building contractors, and the like represented the program’s opponents. E. R. Thrapp, executive vice president of the Southern California Building and Loan Association, wrote Councilman Davenport to commend his antihousing position: “Public Housing is a big step in the direction of Socialism and that is one of the things we are trying to stay away from these days.” H. Bock wrote to Davenport: “Keep up the wonderful good work, to help Wght and win this battle against this Russian Communistic Socialistic Housing Project, which is trying to destroy our freedom, liberty, and our free enterprise system.” “CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR STAND AGAINST SOCIALISM,” the Home Owners and Taxpayer Association sent a telegram to the council, “STICK BY YOUR GUNS.” Albert Leonard, a realtor and insurer, congratulated the council “for your grand demonstration of the Wrst principles of rock bound true Americanism in your splendid action of yesterday [December 3] with relation to Bureaucratic Housing.” Applauding the action of the council, the Times attacked the “bureaucratic housing empire” which was the product of “New and Fair Dealers [who] control so many captive votes in their drive to Socialistic goals.”11 On December 10, City Attorney Ray L. Chesbro issued a reinterpretation of the rider to the Independent OfWces Appropriations Act

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that reversed the September 20 opinion of his staff. He advised the City Council that it could cancel the federal contract by resolution, which, unlike an ordinance, was not subject to mayoral veto. Because federal expenditures in the public housing program had been invested largely in site acquisition, Chesbro gave it as his opinion that Wnancial damages could be recovered through the sale of this real estate. The following day, Councilman Davenport introduced such a resolution, as per Chesbro’s opinion, to rescind the contract. But with two of its number absent, the antihousing bloc did not have the necessary votes to force the issue.12 On December 26, the City Council, now with all members present, again met to discuss the Davenport resolution. Both opponents and proponents of the public housing program voiced their opinion to an audience of 1,000 people for three hours. Speaking against the program was an array of representatives of the real estate lobby, disaffected homeowners, and patriotic and political conservatives. The CHA showed its short Wlm “And 10,000 More,” which portrayed the need for public housing in the context of Los Angeles slums. With this, according to the People’s World, “[Councilman] Davenport frothed with rage, claiming the Wlm was ‘phony.’” “It’s no more phony than some of the speeches heard from your side,” retorted Councilman Leonard E. Timberlake. Speaking in favor of continuing the public housing program was a classic lineup of the left of the Keynesian coalition: labor unions; veterans’ groups; religious, ethnic, and civic organizations; and liberal and leftist political associations. That afternoon the council voted 8–7 to adopt a resolution in which the federal contract was “rejected, rescinded, cancelled and annulled.”13 In a December 12 letter from John Taylor Egan of the PHA, Bowron had been told that, should the public housing contract be reneged, the city would owe the federal government $13,039,566. This sum could be recovered by seizure of unappropriated funds in the city treasury, seizure of city property, or by mandamus to require the mayor and the City Council to take any and all additional action necessary to raise funds. Bowron declared to the council on December 19 that he was “neither an advocate nor an opponent of public housing” but was concerned that the city could ill afford to repay the money that would be owed to the federal government.14 Following the council’s December 26 resolution, Bowron adopted a more forceful opinion. Appearing before the council on January 3, 1952, the mayor maintained that the council had no legal or moral

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right to cancel the federal contract. As mayor, he was “not and never have been a champion of public housing. My concern is the public welfare.” He would prefer private enterprise to assume the task of providing low-income housing for the public welfare, but his experience had shown this to be structurally impossible. Because of the high cost of both material and labor, federal Wnancing was a prerequisite. As to the equation of public housing with socialism, Bowron failed “to grasp the reasoning that Federal subsidies for the beneWt of the less fortunate are socialistic and Federal subsidies for those who are engaged in business, with particular reference to building and Wnancing, are not socialistic.” While Bowron’s statements were lauded and aired by the advocates of public housing, they were simultaneously condemned by the Chamber of Commerce, the Home Builders Institute, and the Times.15 Proposition B Upon the council action of December 26, 1951, the CHA Wled a petition for a writ of mandate with the California Supreme Court in order to force the City Council to comply with the provisions of the 1949 agreement. Meanwhile, the council had, in January 1952, unanimously decided to submit the controversy to the municipal polls to ask city voters if they wished to “reinstate” the public housing contract. This measure was to appear as Proposition B on the June 3, 1952, state primary ballot. If the California Supreme Court ruled that the council could abrogate its contract with the CHA, Mayor Bowron told his January 6 radio audience, “that will terminate and end the 10,000 unit low rent public housing program, and there would be nothing for the people to vote upon.” The Committee against Socialist Housing (CASH), chaired by conservative Democrat Frederick C. Dockweiler and with home builder Fritz B. Burns providing Wnancial backing and acting as organizational spokesman, did not wait for the court decision to launch their “No on B” campaign. A January 31 Xyer alerted the faithful that the “hottest and most bitterly fought election in recent years is forecast for Tuesday, June 3.” CASH had engaged the Baus and Ross public relations Wrm—veterans of the 1948 “No on 14” and the 1950 Proposition 10 battles—to handle the well-Wnanced campaign.16 On April 28, the California Supreme Court issued a peremptory writ of mandate, ruling that the council “had no right or power to rescind the approval of the project or to cancel or abrogate the agreements.” Nevertheless, the council instructed the city attorney to appeal

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for a rehearing by the California Supreme Court, which was denied on May 19. On May 27, the state attorney general concluded that based on the decision of the court, Proposition B would be invalid, void, and of no force and effect. A taxpayers’ suit, Wled on May 1, sought to prevent Proposition B from appearing on the ballot on the grounds that the resulting vote would be legally futile and a waste of public moneys. Judge Frank G. Swain rejected this plea on the following day and pointed out that the ballot was already at the printer and that thus the expense of an injunction might be greater than the cost of allowing the process to continue.17 On May 15, the mayor extended invitations to a number of prominent citizens—both proponents and opponents of public housing—to participate in a conference. That colloquium was intended to determine whether the 10,000-unit public housing program should go forward as planned or whether changes to the contract should be applied for by the CHA. When fully advised by this conference, Bowron would consult with the CHA and, “if it appears to be in the best interests of the city,” would go to Washington and consult with the appropriate federal authorities in order to secure desirable changes within the existing agreement. The conference was not open to the public. “Serious discussions of this character cannot be conducted in an atmosphere of hysteria or amid the din of loud shouting,” Bowron told his May 18 radio audience. “Only persons who have been asked to participate in the conference will be admitted.” Yet opponents of the public housing program, personally invited by Bowron, refused to attend.18 The conference was held May 20–24 in the Mayor’s Reception Room in City Hall, from where it was televised over Wve stations from 8:30 to 10:30 A.M. On the Wrst day of the conference, about Wfty demonstrators, mostly women, headed by Henry Weber, president of the Small Property Owners League, clamored for access to the conference. Barred from attending, the demonstrators marched around city hall armed with placards: “The Mayor is a Dictator,” “All Commies, progressives and socialists are for public housing,” and so on. Republican National Committeeman McIntyre Faries was accused of being a Communist because his law Wrm represented the CHA. Though no enthusiastic fan of public housing, Faries believed that public housing was a civic obligation essential for low-income families—“as necessary as county hospitals.” He was deeply offended when “well-fed ladies hissed and booed me; they chose not to believe there was, and is, poverty and squalor such as Wne ladies of their type never see.”19

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The conference was to develop facts relevant to the future of the public housing program by question and answer. First the mayor, then the invited citizens asked questions of attorneys for the city and the CHA. Rules of evidence provided the framework for the conference; questions were neither to be leading nor to embody a statement. The hearing, as evaluated by the Times, “was characterized largely by dry, statistical testimony.” Climaxing the conference, Bowron accused police chief William H. Parker of delivering “the most misleading report ever issued during my administration.” Parker’s report, initially requested by the Chamber of Commerce, showed that police response to juvenile delinquency was higher in the projects than in selected nearby areas. The report failed to mention the absence of juveniles—delinquent or not—in the selected areas. “There is nothing about a public housing project,” Bowron stated, contradicting the upshot of Parker’s account, “which inherently breeds crime.”20

Figure 9. Denied entry to the mayor’s housing conference, protesters from the Small Property Owners League watched the proceedings on television. (Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)

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Assessing the damages following the Wrst day of testimony, the May 21 Times wrote that the conference was “little better than a propaganda engine for the public housers, giving them, with the Mayor’s assistance, an ofWcial forum for their public housing campaign.” The following day, Frederick Dockweiler called the hearings a “kangaroo court.” The possibility that the mayor’s conference may have strengthened the proponents of public housing weighed heavily on the minds of its opponents. On the penultimate day of the conference, Councilman John Holland received a memo pertaining to an ofWce visit by one of his constituents: “Mrs. Graham was very nice, talked logically, and seemed sincere—but she said that the Mayor’s TV sessions this week has done very much to hurt the Anti’s.” “The Mayor’s conference undoubtably did some harm,” acknowledged the May 27 Times, while the tactics of the conference—getting the “Wrst lick” with a loud “lie”— were compared favorably to those of both Hitler and Communists. The paper urged readers to “Beware the lie!” which it said arose from the battalion of the statists or state Socialists or whatever the current name is for those who are taking over the functions of free communities in the name of public welfare and the general health, wealth and happiness of mankind.21

Opponents of public housing, though expressly and continuously invited by the mayor, refused to attend the conference. They cited the proximity of the Proposition B vote, combined with pro–public housing propaganda that might unduly inXuence the electorate, as the reason for their unwillingness to attend. This logic, however, did not prevent them from holding their own series of televised meetings. Moderated by James L. Beebe, former chairman of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, these hearings took place May 27–30, from 9:30 to 11:30 A.M., in the boardroom of the Chamber of Commerce ofWces. As with the mayor’s conference, people on both sides of the public housing issue were invited. Though public housing proponents accepted their invitations, Beebe informed Bowron that they would not be given free rein to present their viewpoint because that had already been done at the mayor’s conference.22 The conservative press sympathetically covered the highlights of this conference. Councilmen Holland and Davenport presented their oppositional perspective of the public housing program, insisting that they had originally voted for the contract only because of the mayor’s endorsement. The head of the Department of Building and Safety testiWed

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that 90 percent of the city’s substandard dwellings could be rehabilitated through code enforcement. Mayor Bowron was beset by a group of women whose homes were designated to be cleared for the new projects. They advanced on the mayor so aggressively that a police sergeant stepped in to restrain them. “But,” wrote the May 30 Times, “not before some of the women had shaken their Wngers under the Mayor’s ofWcial nose and had given him ‘a piece of their minds.’” Sharp verbal clashes between Beebe and Bowron characterized the Wnal day of the hearing. “I am a Republican,” stated Bowron, trying to strip the color from the pink-tinged public housing program. “I say that it is not Socialism.” “I am a Democrat,” retorted Beebe, “and I say it is Socialism.”23 The “No on B” campaign was “a very bitter campaign” recalled Herbert Baus of the Baus and Ross public relations Wrm. Baus and Ross’s slogan, “Don’t pay somebody else’s rent,” “was a smasheroo on our billboards.” “STOP SOCIALIST HOUSING GRAB” was the headline on a “No on B” Xyer. And “CRIME In Public Housing!” was the headline of a newspaper ad citing the report by Chief Parker that had been denounced by Bowron: “Crime is higher in Public Housing Projects than in adjacent so-called ‘slum’ areas! . . . Vote NO Prop. ‘B.’”24 The “Yes on Prop. B” campaign was coordinated by Citizens for Slum Clearance. “All Faiths United for a Better L.A.” proclaimed an ad in the Mirror, listing more than one hundred Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders who called for a yes vote on Proposition B: “Decent Homes for all the children of God.” The campaign emphasized the cost to taxpayers should the public housing contract be canceled: $13 million to repay the federal government for work already done, and the $3 million annual taxpayer subsidy for police, Wre, and health service to the slums. “This is the AMERICAN WAY,” proclaimed a “Yes on Prop. B” circular; “Don’t Be Duped!” The Daily News excoriated the hypocrisy of public housing foes decrying the “socialist” nature of the tax-subsidized program, pointing to “THE ‘SOCIALISM’ OF AN ANNUAL . . . TAX SUBSIDY FOR SLUMS!”25 On June 3, the anti–public housing forces carried twelve of the Wfteen council districts with a majority of 379,050 voting “no”—to not reinstate the contract—to 258,777 voting “yes.” “The people have shouted a thunderous ‘No’ to public housing,” declared Councilman Davenport. The three districts with “yes” votes predominating were the Eighth (South-Central), Ninth (Eastside), and Fifteenth (Harbor), represented by public housing advocates Edward R. Roybal, Kenneth Hahn, and John S. Gibson respectively.26

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In his radio address after the election, Bowron paternalistically questioned the rationality of the voting public: “I wonder how many of you carefully read and understood the question . . . ? [C]onsidering the wording of the proposition and subsequent decision of the State Supreme Court, I ask the question, and let you answer it! How much of a so-called ‘mandate’ was last Tuesday’s majority ‘No’ vote on Proposition B?” This was interpreted by the Times as the mayor’s “saying that the public was so dumb that it didn’t know what it was voting about.” The Highland Park branch of the Small Property Owners League sent an open letter to Bowron: “Regardless of your inference that the voters were confused, dumb or simple, they voted to tell our elected ofWcials they DO NOT WANT BUREAUCRATIC PUBLIC HOUSING in Los Angeles.” A constituent wrote Bowron to chastise his post-proposition posture on B: “You will unquestionably feel the full brunt of the voters’ dissatisfaction with your actions in the coming April election.”27 Public housing opponents seized upon the special election results, though they were legally worthless, as a new weapon in their arsenal. On June 12, Councilman Holland wrote to members of the U.S. Congress seeking support to cancel the contract in light of the overwhelming “No on B” vote. That same day, the two Republican senators from California—William Knowland and Richard Nixon—attempted to write a ban on the public housing program in Los Angeles into an economic control bill in the U.S. Senate, but they were ruled out of order. Holland wrote to Nixon on July 29, congratulating the senator on receiving the Republican vice presidential nomination and informing him that “several of us Councilmen would like a chance to talk with you about our public housing situation here in Los Angeles.” Holland proposed that the public housing contract be transferred from Title III to Title I (urban redevelopment) under the provisions of the 1949 Housing Act: “I feel sure [this] would be acceptable to the voters here and very desirable to everyone concerned—except Mr. Holtzendorf[f].” As Nixon was preparing for his vice presidential campaign, his executive secretary replied to Holland, assuring the councilman of the senator’s interest.28 True to his word of the previous May, Mayor Bowron, accompanied by Howard Holtzendorff, met with President Truman in Washington, D.C., on August 18 to revise the city’s public housing program. Two days later, the mayor announced that a renegotiated program had been worked out with federal authorities, a program to which Truman had given his personal approval. All the thirteen-story buildings were

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to be eliminated (which required a redesign of Elysian Park Heights, Rose Hill Courts Extension, and Aliso Apartments), and the site boundaries of Rose Hill Courts Extension were to be revised. The overall number of projected units was thereby reduced from 10,000 to 7,000, with the corresponding costs falling from $110,896,599 to $83,447,457. “This, I believe,” wrote Bowron, “eliminates the principal objectionable features of the program as far as could be determined based upon an analysis of popular expressions.”29 Public housing opponents, however, desired no compromise. “If the public housing program is wrong, as a majority of the citizens of Los Angeles and of the City Councilmen believe,” opined the Times, “then it is as wrong at 7000 units as it is at 10,000.” Upon learning of Bowron’s trip, the antihousing majority on the City Council appropriated $600 from the Council Fund in order to send Councilman George Cronk scurrying to Washington to counteract Bowron’s initiative. Meeting Wrst with John Egan Taylor, commissioner of the PHA, and then with Raymond Foley, administrator of the HHFA, Cronk was politely informed that the federal government intended to honor its contract with the city. “A not too rosy picture,” Cronk reported to the council. Attempting but unable to meet with Senator Nixon, Cronk was assured by a political colleague and ally of the senator that the Republicans, should they win the White House or make substantial gains in Congress in November, would be in a position to offer the public housing opponents of Los Angeles “some real help.” The responsibility for the program’s cancellation was, concluded Cronk, dependent on a new administration in Washington and a new mayor in Los Angeles.30 The Council and the Courts Still declining to undertake the ofWcial tasks required for the construction of the projects (for example, to close and vacate alleys or streets in the project construction sites), the city was issued yet another writ from the California Supreme Court. On June 27, 1952, the council was “ordered and commanded to perform the terms of the agreements entered into with the petitioner.” On July 7, the CHA Wled a multimilliondollar claim for damages with the city clerk against the eight antihousing city councilmen. The claim charged the council of violating the contractual obligations of the city’s public housing program under the 1949 Housing Act.31 On August 5, the CHA Wled a brief with the California Supreme Court asking that the council be judged in contempt for refusing to

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obey the writ of mandate and that it be Wned and its members imprisoned. In what Councilman Davenport described as a “cunning conspiracy of entrapment,” the council was issued an order to appear in court on September 29 and show cause as to why it should not be held in contempt. Worse things could happen to a public ofWcial, stated Davenport, “than [to] cravenly surrender to the browbeating of a bureaucracy [the CHA] bent upon breaking down individual freedom and substituting national socialism for the American way of life.” The following week, the council responded by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari nullifying the state supreme court injunction on the basis that the 1937 Housing Act as well as the 1952 Independent OfWces Appropriations Act had been legally misinterpreted by the state supreme court.32 The writ of certiorari was denied on October 13, 1952, by the U.S. Supreme Court. In April 1953, the California Supreme Court ordered the council to comply with the writ of mandate though it did not impose Wnes for their previous noncompliance. Justice Jesse W. Carter concurred with the majority’s reasoning and ruling, yet he believed that punishment should be imposed on the council for refusal to obey the writ. “The record of this case presents a sordid picture of political intrigue and chicanery,” he wrote in his dissenting opinion, “[to] obstruct, delay and defeat the housing project contemplated by said contract.”33 Seeing Red The equation of socialism with public housing was to remain a generic one—impersonal and rather diffuse—until the end of August 1952. The United Patriotic People of U.S.A. published a leaXet entitled “Bowron Administration Moving People via Gestapo Housing Authority . . . ,” declaring that “public housing would be the last rung in the ladder toward complete socialism, one step this side of Communism and Our downfall.” Ever bombastic, Councilman Davenport asserted that Communists had inWltrated the CHA and were “committed to a campaign of terrorism against all councilmen opposing the Socialistic project.” They had, he said, even threatened Davenport’s “poor ailing mother back in McKeesport, Pa.” On the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, architect Robert Alexander recalled public debates with the “Real Estate lion’s den” over the issue of public housing. Agreeing that public housing was indeed “socialistic” when deWned as the expenditure of government money on public works, “I would point out that as I

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drove to the meeting on a socialist road, walked on a socialistic sidewalk under a socialist streetlight and had just drunk a glass of socialist water, I thought I would meet an opponent who was a product of socialist education as I was.”34 Frank Wilkinson appeared in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County as an expert witness in a lawsuit instigated by the CHA against three Chavez Ravine property owners who were resisting condemnation proceedings for the Elysian Park Heights project. As the opening witness on August 27, Wilkinson had given a lengthy summary of the city’s housing needs. He was questioned on the reasons Chavez Ravine had been selected as a public housing site and on the poor housing conditions, inadequate sanitation, and lack of modern facilities in Chavez Ravine. During cross-examination on August 29, Felix H. McGinnis, attorney for the property owners, asked what organizations, “political or otherwise,” Wilkinson had been a member of since his enrollment as a UCLA student in 1932. Wilkinson qualiWed himself as an expert witness, listing the professional, religious, and student organizations to which he had belonged. “I have been a member of other organizations,” he added, “[but] I do not wish to state the names of [these], and if necessary, I’d be glad to explain why.” Instructed by the court to answer the question immediately, he replied: I believe that I shall be compelled by matters of personal conscience to refuse to answer the question and state that I am doing so because of personal conscience, and I’d like to assure you [the court] that there is nothing that I have belonged to that I am not completely proud and that my personal record wouldn’t make me proud to state, but I do not feel that I want to answer this question and, if necessary, I would hold that to answer such a question might in some way incriminate me.

CHA attorney Francis J. O’Neill belatedly objected to the questioning of Wilkinson as “incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial and has no bearing on this case” and moved that these questions be stricken from the record. In overruling the objection, Judge Otto Emme reminded counsel that since Wilkinson had offered himself as an expert witness, his “background, education, experience and the like” became valid matters of inquiry to determine the witness’s ability as an authority. The judge declared a recess until September 2 to permit Wilkinson to seek legal advice.35 The CHA dropped Wilkinson as an expert witness and suspended

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him from his job in the Housing Authority. The agency’s executive director, Howard Holtzendorff, said he was shocked when Wilkinson refused to answer but that he thought that Wilkinson’s refusal was based on moral and religious scruples. “However,” he continued, “there is no place in the authority for any disloyal person or for anyone who raises doubt of his loyalty by refusal to answer such a question.” CHA attorney Francis O’Neill expressed surprise at the turn of events: “So far as we can ascertain there is nothing in [Wilkinson’s] record that would show anything improper.”36 The anti–public housing majority on the City Council quickly moved to exploit the situation. “It is always the same people who beat their breast for the downtrodden who also refuse to answer questions on the grounds it might incriminate them,” said Councilman Charles Navarro. “I predict that many eyebrows will be raised when other Housing Authority people are asked the same question.” “This is the same pattern that Communists are using in order to overthrow the government under which they live,” stated Councilman Cronk. After claiming that Wilkinson had been “indoctrinating our children” by showing “a phony Wlm—an absolute travesty—about Los Angeles slums,” Councilman Davenport introduced a motion, approved unanimously, to have the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigate the CHA.37 Meanwhile, the cross-examination of Wilkinson resumed when Judge Emme’s court reconvened on September 2. McGinnis, attorney for the defendants, sought to establish Wilkinson’s alleged Communist connections and to attack his credibility in the “promotion of socialistic or low-cost housing and such activities.” Given Wilkinson’s suspension and removal as an expert witness, CHA attorney W. S. Holbrook, despite his discomfort—“it is a great deal of embarrassment, both to the [Housing] Commission and to myself personally, to object to this question”—successfully protested that further inquiry into Wilkinson’s political afWliations was irrelevant. McGinnis asserted that were he permitted a full and complete cross-examination of Wilkinson, he would show that the witness was a longtime member of the Communist Party and its afWliate organizations, that he attended meetings of such in his home and elsewhere, and that he subscribed to the People’s World, “which is generally known to be a subversive publication.”38 At the September 3 council meeting, Councilman Davenport attempted to introduce a resolution calling on the city attorney to advise the council as to means and ways to combat the public housing program

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modiWcation of the past August. The resolution named Mayor Bowron and the CHA’s Holtzendorff as “co-conspirators.” When it was suggested that the wording of the resolution be toned down, Davenport became extremely agitated. Councilman Hahn asked the sergeant at arms to keep an eye on Davenport, remarking “I think he is going berserk.” Councilman Roybal took the Xoor and stated that Davenport’s resolution was not based on fact. “I resent that!” Davenport retorted, jumping to his feet. The council’s president, Harold A. Henry, then instructed Davenport to take his seat. “If the gentleman will give me permission,” Roybal volunteered to Henry, “I’ll set him down for you.” “He’s been threatening me with physical violence,” charged Davenport, alluding to stereotypical Mexican comportment, “even to the point of a knife.”39 The next day the council received a letter from the Mexican Chamber of Commerce protesting “the vile, false, and defamatory statement” that had been directed at Roybal, a Mexican American, “in these tawdry remarks of a political demagogue.” In a rage, Davenport screamed about the letter. “It looks like I am going to stand alone on the housing issue,” he shouted as the rest of the councilmen walked out of the chambers. Davenport then incoherently raved for thirty-Wve minutes on the general subject of public housing and subversives to an audience of spectators who continued to boo him. On exiting, he accused the public of being a “bunch of lefties.” “The man is evidently blowing his top,” said Councilman Don A. Allen, “and I’m going to call for the psycho ward.” Police Chief William Parker and two City Health Department doctors subsequently confronted Davenport in council chambers.40 Davenport later asserted that the entire episode had been framed by the CHA using Gestapo methods to make him “the target of the oldest smear attack in the Communist functionaries’ arsenal of poisonous darts.” He also stated that the Mexican Chamber of Commerce was a “Communist-front organization” and that he was surprised by their letter because “I am Wghting . . . [to save] the homes of Mexican Americans in Chavez Ravine.” The Daily News editorialized that Davenport’s antics were a disgrace unbecoming to the nation’s third-largest city and demanded his removal from ofWce. Yet the Hearst-owned Herald and Express urged its readers to heed Davenport’s tirade against socialistic public housing and to dismiss his antics in the council as a “frame-up” by a “stacked deck of leftists.”41 On September 5, Mayor Bowron was subpoenaed to appear at the

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eminent-domain hearings for Chavez Ravine, where he was informed that his testimony would be delayed. Upon departing the courthouse, the mayor was confronted by John Hogya, age thirty-nine, a vocal member of the Small Property Owners League. “Didn’t I warn you about Wilkinson?” Hogya belligerently asked. The mayor replied that he hadn’t, but Hogya persisted in his questioning. Becoming annoyed, Bowron asked Hogya whom he represented. “I don’t represent communists,” Hogya spat. “Do you represent Joe Stalin?” retorted Bowron. “No, I don’t” Hogya shot back, “but you do.” Enraged, the mayor swung at Hogya, while an executive assistant to the mayor stepped in to keep the brawl from escalating. Unhurt, Hogya announced to the press: “It was like a woman’s blow—a powder puff punch.” Henry Weber, president of the Small Property Owners League, announced the offer of a winner-take-all Wght for a $500 purse between the mayor and “any selected anti–public housing citizen of his own age.”42 Following Wilkinson’s assertion of his Fifth Amendment rights, Holtzendorff lost little time in contacting his personal friend, State Senator Hugh M. Burns, chairman of CUAC. In a September 3 phone call to Burns, Holtzendorff requested that CUAC investigate alleged Communist inWltration of the CHA, assuring Burns of the CHA’s cooperation. Nicola Giulii, president of the Housing Commission, wrote to California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown requesting a full and complete investigation of the CHA. Burns’s committee was consequently requested by Brown and Los Angeles County District Attorney Ernest Roll. CUAC convened in Los Angeles on September 26 at the CHA ofWces at 1401 East First Street.43 CHA employees Frank Wilkinson, Sidney Green, Adina Williamson, Elizabeth Smith, H. L. Sunshine, Jack Naiditch, Jessie Terry, Dorothy Foster, Ruth Johnson, and Sarah Fefferman and former employee Fay Kovner were subpoenaed to appear before the committee. In addition, the press reported that Carol Andre and Oliver Haskell, former employees of the CHA, were wanted for questioning but their whereabouts were unknown. Wilkinson, undergoing knee surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital for an injury he had received at the mayor’s conference in May (he had split the cartilage in his knee as he knelt down to get some material out of his briefcase on the Xoor), was unable to appear when Wrst summoned. Trying to subpoena Wilkinson when he was in the operating room, the servers were refused entry by the doctors. When servers failed to awaken the still-anaesthetized patient in the recovery room, they left the subpoena pinned to his dressing gown. “Wilkinson’s

Figure 10. Bowron’s fisticuffs headlined the Los Angeles Mirror on September 5, 1952.

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sudden illness and admission to a hospital will not stop our plans to question him,” explained Richard E. Combs, CUAC chief investigator.44 In the initial morning session of September 26, Housing Commissioner George A. Beavers Jr. read a prepared statement. The CHA had, he conWrmed, required a loyalty oath since 1942, had always fully cooperated with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, and Wrmly believed in the adage “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” The CHA was thus anxious to learn of any disloyal employees. “While employees have a constitutional right to refuse to answer questions which they feel would incriminate them, they do not have a constitutional right to continue in the employment of the Housing Authority.” Holtzendorff next testiWed that he had received reports of subversive activity in the CHA since his arrival there in 1941. Wilkinson never gave cause for suspicion, according to Holtzendorff, afWrming his former assistant as a “trustworthy, reliable and loyal employee.”45 At the afternoon session, Green, Williamson, and Smith took the Fifth Amendment when questioned and were promptly dismissed from the CHA. Kovner, who had resigned from the CHA in 1950 to get married, also did not cooperate with the committee. Hy Sunshine testiWed that sometime around 1947 (he was unsure of the year), he and his wife Janice had been paid an after-dinner visit by Carole Andre and Frank Wilkinson. According to Sunshine, Andre and Wilkinson began discussing the Communist Party but “I don’t know if you would say I got solicited or not . . . the thing was that they never came out directly and asked me to join nor did they come out directly and say that they were members.” Professing amazement and telling Wilkinson to be on his way, Sunshine asserted that he and Wilkinson did not enjoy a warm personal relationship after this meeting.46 CUAC reconvened at the CHA ofWces on October 28, calling Wilkinson and additional witnesses. Wilkinson, now recovered from surgery, appeared and was questioned about the organizations he had belonged to as a student at UCLA, about whom he had lectured to on the subject of public housing, and about his subscription to the People’s World. When he refused to cooperate by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights, he was promptly Wred from the CHA. He released a statement expressing his belief that “it is my right to think what I want, read what I choose and associate with whomever I please.” Wilkinson further stated that he would never, under compulsion, afWrm or deny his political or religious afWliations. His personal principles had long been known to the CHA and their failure to support him “has in no way softened the

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savagery of the anti-housing opposition’s attack. On the contrary, it has opened yet wider the Xoodgates for more serious assault. . . . No progressive social reform ever can be achieved and sustained at the sacriWce of basic constitutional principles.” “In our opinion Wilkinson was the backbone of the effort to inWltrate the Housing Authority,” declared CUAC investigator Richard Combs. He described Wilkinson as a “Xoater” who had no connection to any particular Communist cell—“a protection often accorded to top Communists.”47 Jack Naiditch, a painter for the CHA, was Wred when he took the Fifth. The only cooperative witness that day was Fritz Patrick Burns, son of Fritz B. Burns, the Los Angeles home builder and leading spokesman of the real estate lobby in Southern California. Patrick testiWed that Wilkinson had lectured in a 1949 class at the University of Southern California that Patrick had attended. Wilkinson was pro–public housing, had once misquoted Patrick’s father, and gave tours of the slums in his capacity as public relations director of the CHA. Moreover, in the class he was sometimes in the company of Carol Andre, planning commissioner Robert Alexander, or Ulysses Gregg—a “Negro public housing manager.” As Combs said: “Burns was very helpful in adding important links to the overall Communist picture which is now taking deWnite form.”48 Following Wilkinson’s August 29 suspension from the CHA, the ofWce of the Housing Authority “was Xooded with letters” asking for Wilkinson’s immediate reinstatement. These letters—some seven hundred in all—were not viewed as a manifestation of popular support for Wilkinson. Rather, they were turned over to CUAC, which dismissed them as evidence of the “Communist propaganda machine [that] has unleashed a torrent of letters, postcards, mimeographed statements and telegrams.” “It is obvious,” Msgr. O’Dwyer had written to the housing commissioners, “that this attack upon Mr. Wilkinson is actually another attempt to destroy public housing as well as an attempt to destroy a faithful and devoted employee of the Housing Authority. . . . I need hardly say that my esteem for Frank Wilkinson has not been at all diminished by the stand he now takes.” The committee consequently subpoenaed three of the letter writers—Eleanor Raymond, Pauline Schindler, and Frances Eisenberg—all of whom refused to cooperate.49 Wilkinson’s wife, Jean, was subpoenaed and refused to answer questions dealing with Frank because information shared by spouses is legally considered to be conWdential. She refused to answer questions regarding her personal afWliations with the Communist Party by invoking

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the Fifth Amendment. Because Jean Wilkinson and Frances Eisenberg were high school teachers, the subversion of the CHA was linked to public schools, to the Los Angeles Federation of Teachers, and to the United Public Workers and was thus seen as constituting an assault on the city government on a number of fronts. “Public housing is a shining target for Communist inWltration,” explained CUAC attorney Combs, “and the Communists apparently hoped to mesh this activity with inWltration into teacher and government employee organizations.”50 “I have become convinced,” John Holland told the council at the close of the CUAC hearings, “that the public housing scheme is a Communist product and that its operations here have been following the Communist pattern.” In the Wnal report of its hearings, CUAC concluded that all the alleged Communists in the CHA—Frank Wilkinson, Sidney Green, Elizabeth Smith, Jack Naiditch, and Adina Williamson— had been identiWed and duly dismissed. Although the committee noted in its seventh report that “Wve Communists out of a total of 450 employees in the Los Angeles City Housing Authority is obviously not a very heavy incidence of inWltration,” it added that the danger of Communism was not to be underestimated as public housing was a breeding ground for subversives: The housing authority is a natural target for Communist inWltration because the people who are forced to live in public housing units are more apt to be socially maladjusted and dissatisWed and therefore more susceptible to the blandishment of clever Communist recruiting specialists than the average person who has a home of his own. Furthermore, the element of congestion and the high incidence of racial minority groups combine to make the Weld even more fertile.51

Project Life: Limiting Political Expression As it was in the city and the nation, the curtailment of political discourse via the Red Scare was a characteristic of life in the projects. Oliver Haskell, manager of Banning Homes, rented the project auditorium to a tenants’ organization for a meeting protesting the beating death of Samuel Jones, an African American resident of the project, at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The January 9, 1951, meeting was to feature William L. Patterson, national secretary of the Civil Rights Congress, which was classiWed as a Communist Front organization by the U.S. attorney general. Both Mayor Bowron and the LAPD voiced their displeasure to CHA executive director Holtzendorff

126

The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”

regarding this assembly. As a result, the lease on the auditorium was canceled and Haskell was Wred for “causing irreparable damage to the public relations of the Housing Authority.” Holtzendorff relayed to Haskell, by way of Frank Wilkinson, that his “head simply had to roll.” The meeting went ahead as scheduled—only outdoors—and so, recalled Haskell, “the public relations of the Housing Authority suffered only in the eyes of the unions and supporters of public housing for cancelling the meeting.”52 In 1952, Congress passed the Gwinn Amendment, which forbade the occupation of public housing by a member of an organization on the attorney general’s list of subversive groups. In January 1953, the CHA began to mail out loyalty oath forms, instructing tenants to sign them by February 1 or face eviction. Thirty-six tenants refused to sign and constituted themselves as the Residents Committee against Loyalty Oaths in Housing. “The Communists here have started an organization to try to get the people not to sign,” said Holtzendorff. “I understand they have passed out circulars claiming the requirement is a ‘violation of civil rights’ and is ‘unconstitutional.’” Representing this committee, ACLU attorneys threatened an injunction against the CHA should evictions proceed. At the end of February, CHA attorneys issued a stipulation, agreeing to halt all eviction proceedings pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision as to the constitutionality of the Gwinn Amendment.53 In April 1953, the cases of Wve members of the Residents Committee against Loyalty Oaths in Housing went to the Municipal Court of Los Angeles, where Judge Lucius Green upheld the CHA’s eviction proceedings. The ruling was reversed in January 1955 by the Appellate Department of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. The purpose of a housing authority is to eradicate slums and provide low-income housing, ruled the superior court, not to exclude otherwise-qualiWed persons from occupying public housing solely on the basis of belonging to an organization designated as subversive by the attorney general. “Nor is it apparent that the laudable purpose of combating the efforts of subversives is advanced by compelling them to live in slums or substandard housing accommodations.” The cases were sent back to the municipal court, where Judge Vernon W. Hunt likewise ruled against the CHA in July 1955.54 The 1953 Mayoral Election On December 26, 1952, conWrming a phone conversation that had taken place several days earlier, Times publisher Norman Chandler

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127

wrote to Congressman Norris Poulson asking him to run for mayor with the Wnancial backing of downtown businessmen. Chandler pointed out that the mayor’s salary was likely to be increased and that Poulson would be “entitled to strut around in a car (Cadillac) and chauffeur supplied by the city.” Poulson candidly noted in his memoirs that he knew very little about the immediate problems of Los Angeles beyond the headlines pertaining to the public housing controversy. He had written to Councilman Harold Henry following the council’s resolution to cancel the federal contract that he was “always opposed to this creeping socialism. . . . Knowing nothing of the details, I still have personally commended those with courage enough to Wght this socialistic menace.” Thus qualiWed, Poulson announced his candidacy in early January 1953.55 Herbert Baus, of the Baus and Ross public relations Wrm, which handled Poulson’s campaign, recalled that the mayoral race “was a bloody and bitter campaign.” Poulson was backed by the “business community and the [Republican] establishment. . . . The other side had the Democratic establishment, the labor unions, and the minorities.” The public housing program was the standard around which battle lines were drawn: “It was a major issue, if not the major issue. . . . His [Bowron’s] major vulnerability was that he refused to obey the will of the people in regard to the public housing Wght.” Baus’s partner, William Ross, concurred that the public housing issue was Bowron’s “Achilles’ heel.” “A vote for Poulson,” wrote the Times, prepping its readership for the April 7 primary, “is a vote against the public housing program.” In the primary, Poulson received a plurality of the votes but not a majority, necessitating a runoff in the May general election. Public housing “is the issue,” the Times wrote in an April 22 editorial, “on which Los Angeles is rejecting Mayor Bowron in favor of Norris Poulson.”56 Following his second-place showing at the primaries, Bowron deployed an aggressive campaign strategy. In his radio speech of May 5, Bowron attacked the powerful economic presence of the Times and its drive to dominate city government. The 1953 municipal election was an attempt, according to Bowron, “by a small, immensely wealthy, incredibly powerful group to force you to elect as your mayor a man who will represent them—not you—a man who will do their bidding, not yours.” Through the distortion, suppression, and the misrepresentation of its news coverage, Bowron added, the Times’s “betrayal of our democratic concept of a free press goes far beyond election politics.”

128

The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”

Referring to the central theme of the mayoral race, Bowron informed his audience that the Times “has absolutely not told you the truth about the public housing issue.” Poulson responded to Bowron’s strategy: “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they Wrst make mad. Bowron’s campaign has been a campaign of rage.”57 On March 23, 1953, Councilman George Cronk had written to Congressman Clare Hoffman asking that a congressional committee be sent to Los Angeles “to investigate the entire public housing controversy and local operations.” SpeciWcally, the committee’s task would be to investigate the possible mismanagement of federal funds by the CHA and the political participation of CHA employees in violation of the Hatch Act. Scheduled to convene on May 18, hearings of the House Special Subcommittee on Government Operations were boycotted by its Democratic membership because of the proximity of the municipal election of May 26. Both Bowron and Poulson asked the committee to reschedule, but to no avail; Congressman Hoffman claimed he knew nothing of the municipal elections or of its issues. Bowron labeled the hearings a “committee to do a job of political hatchet work.” The Daily News congratulated Poulson on his political ingenuity: “The best way to get some free campaign help is to persuade a committee of Congress to intervene in local politics by putting on a hearing at just the right time.”58 The televised hearings presented Bowron’s mayoral candidacy and his championship of public housing in an unXattering light. The most publicized aspect of the hearings was the alleged extent to which Communist employees as well as Communist tenants had inWltrated the CHA. Holtzendorff, dubbed the “sweating red-faced housing chief” by the Herald and Express, was badgered and accused by the committee so that threatened Wsticuffs, book throwing, and heated verbal exchanges were parts of the media spectacular. Police Chief William Parker read Frank Wilkinson’s entire dossier to the committee (see Appendix A).59 As the Wnal witness, Bowron became “red-faced with anger” because of the rude and abrupt questioning at the hands of the committee. He “got the verbal heave-ho” according to the Mirror. “I have never,” stated the mayor immediately following his testimony, “received such outrageously discourteous treatment in my life.” “Shoddy,” “raw,” and “rigged” were adjectives he used to describe the hearings that evening. The Mirror concluded that the testimony given at the sessions had little to do with the stated objectives of the investigation but was instead “a matter of angry charges, refusals to answer, and general bedlam.”

Figure 11. In its editorial cartoon on May 22, 1953, the Times lampooned the appearance of Howard Holtzendorff, executive director of the CHA, at the hearings of the House Special Subcommittee on Government Operations. Copyright 1953 Los Angeles Times; reprinted with permission.

130

The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”

A concerned constituent, Clara Snyder, wrote to Bowron of the hearings: “It was the most un-American affair I’ve ever witnessed. . . . I am praying that the people of Los Angeles . . . will rise up in protest and elect you.”60 On the Sunday prior to the election, the Times editorialized that the mayor had alienated the City Council and repudiated his constituency: In their place he has taken the “liberal” union ofWcials of the CIO and the AFL. He has taken them on the assumption, which has often proved false, that the union ofWcials command the votes of the union membership. He has also accepted the support of the Independent Progressive Party, which walks with one foot on the red line. He has borrowed their slogans and hurled them at the people who used to vote for him. They are now “economic royalists,” “vested interest” and creatures of the “real estate lobby.”

Bowron’s support of public housing—allying himself “without discrimination with the ‘liberal’ and leftist elements”—was the cause of this schizophrenic behavior. “The public housing program brought him to bed with some characters who were dubious indeed. . . . The story of his relations with Wilkinson is enough, we gravely submit, to disqualify him from his ofWce.” Poulson, said the Times, having “the knack of getting along” with his fellow politicians and promising to bring “an era of good feeling and accomplishment to City Hall,” was the man for the job. “And,” concluded the Times, “he has no Wilkinsons in his train.”61 On May 26, 1953, with a record high voter turnout, Norris Poulson defeated Fletcher Bowron by a margin of around 35,000 votes out of 540,000 ballots cast. The Red Scare in public housing was seemingly the major issue that led to Poulson’s slim victory.62 The Cancellation of the Public Housing Contract Two days after the 1953 election, Poulson announced that although there would be no major shake-ups in the municipal government, he would seek the resignations of the Wve CHA commissioners. Bowron, however, still attempted to maintain the integrity of the public housing program. As a lame-duck mayor, he appointed three new housing commissioners and renamed George A. Beavers Jr., the African American commissioner whom Bowron had Wrst appointed in 1946, to the CHA. All were known for their advocacy of public housing. As the CHA was a state commission, the incoming mayor would be unable to remove

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the new commissioners without prior cause. Seeing this move as a stumbling block in the curtailment of the public housing program, Poulson referred to them as “deathbed appointments” that were a “spiteful attempt to hamper me.” “Mayor Bowron has taken the pleasure,” the June 25 Times caustically editorialized, “of committing a last act of treachery against the voters.” Justifying his action, Bowron explained, “I felt it was my duty and in the public interest to protect and preserve public property for public uses . . . [against] a scheme afoot to sell three or more of the parcels of property acquired for public housing projects to real estate speculators or subdividers.”63 Upon assuming ofWce on July 1, Poulson’s Wrst order of business was to negotiate an end to hostilities in the city’s public housing war. The new mayor conveyed to the CHA’s Holtzendorff that he, as mayor, wanted no more scandals or headlines arising from the public housing program but, rather, peace and harmony in the government of Los Angeles. Though he wished to terminate the majority of the current contract, Poulson assured Holtzendorff he would cooperate fully with the existing program. On the same day, Poulson appeared before the City Council, denouncing the bitterness and factional Wghts that the public housing war had precipitated. He proposed to cut the size of the public housing program in half by eliminating Elysian Park Heights, Rose Hill Courts Extension, and Pacoima and turning these sites over to the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). By a 13–1 vote, Poulson’s plan was approved. Councilman Roybal cast the sole dissenting vote, claiming the council should have more time to consider the proposal.64 Two days later, Poulson and Holtzendorff made a joint appearance in City Council chambers, reported the Mirror, “to announce their truce move to the astonished legislators.” Holtzendorff read a letter from the newly elected president of the Housing Commission, George Beavers Jr., to the mayor and council to the effect that the CHA was “willing to enter into discussions with you or your representatives and with the United States Public Housing Administration, looking to a modiWcation” along the general lines suggested by the July 6 council resolution. “We are willing now to abandon a part of [the contract],” afWrmed Holtzendorff, “provided it can be done lawfully.” The antihousing councilmen, according to the People’s World, “bubbled with glee.”65 By mid-July, a contingent including the mayor, city councilmen, city attorneys, the CHA executive director, and housing commissioners were in Washington to negotiate the Wnal modiWcation of the 1949

Table 6. Public housing projects constructed under the 1949 Housing Act Map reference

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

Project name and location

Jordan Downs (103rd St. and Alameda) Nickerson Gardens (Imperial Highway and Central Ave.) Aliso Apartments (First and Clarence Sts.) Pueblo del Rio Extension (Fifty-Fifth St. and Long Beach Ave.) Rancho San Pedro Extension (First and Beacon Sts., San Pedro) Imperial Courts (Imperial Highway and Croesus Ave.) Estrada Courts Extension (Olympic Blvd. and Lorena St.) Mar Vista Gardens (Inglewood Blvd. and Braddock Dr.) San Fernando Gardens (San Fernando Rd. and Van Nuys Blvd.)

Number of units

Area (acres)

Date completed

Architects

700

49.48

December 31, 1953

James R. Friend

1,110

68.6

March 21, 1955

Paul R. Williams

336

9.2

June 30, 1954

W. F. Ruck

270

15.0

August 31, 1955

194

8.7

July 10, 1953

Theodore Criley Jr. and Henry C. Burge; Robert E. Faxon (associate) Armand Monaco

498

36.1

August 9, 1954

Spaulding-Rex and DeSwarte

200

10.9

March 31, 1954

601

43.2

April 15, 1954

Paul Robinson Hunter; Carl Louis Easton (associate) Albert Criz

448

33.5

October 31, 1955

Arthur B. Gallion and Victor D. Gruen, associated architects

Map 4. Location of public housing projects constructed under the 1949 Housing Act. Numbers correspond to the projects listed in Table 6.

Figure 12. The Times offered its perspective of Bowron’s “deathbed appointments” in its editorial cartoon on June 24, 1953. Copyright 1953 Los Angeles Times; reprinted with permission.

The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War”

135

contract with Albert Cole of the HHFA. Fifty-seven percent, or 5,649 units, from the original contract was cut, and the Chavez Ravine and Rose Hill Courts Extension projects were canceled, with the proviso that the land would go to public use. The Pacoima project, later named San Fernando Gardens, was retained and completed. Despite the recognition that the loss of public housing units represented a blow to the needs of the black community, Housing Commissioner Beavers felt the deal was the best that could be had given the circumstances (see Table 6 and Map 4).66 Thus ended, wrote the Mirror, “one of the longest and hottest political wars in the city’s history.” The Times triumphantly editorialized that the paper was “proud of its part in crying the alarm against this creeping Socialism and in supporting the Mayor who found the way to stop the creep.” Following congressional approval of the negotiated settlement, the council adopted, on August 5, 1953, Ordinance 101,900. Approved with a vote of 12–0, the ordinance executed the agreed-upon modiWcations, ofWcially ending the city’s adherence to the 1949 Housing Contract. Under the terms of the agreement, the CHA granted the city a six months’ option to acquire the abandoned sites of Elysian Park Heights and Rose Hill Courts Extension.67 Conclusion The demise of the public housing program in Los Angeles was clearly linked to the politics of the Red Scare deployed against it. McCarthyism polarized constituencies within the political arena, disabling the Left’s strategy of building consensus through an agenda of social democratic reform. Without public housing as the primary component of the Left’s vision of community modernism, how would the modern city be shaped? And who would shape it?

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CHAPTER 5

“Old Town, Lost Town, Shabby Town, Crook Town”: Bunker Hill and the Modern Cityscape

ith the electoral defeat of public housing and the demise of the Left’s vision of a better world, a fundamental shift occurred in the direction of modern Los Angeles as corporate modernism eclipsed community modernism. Although urban redevelopment and public housing had been historically intertwined, the two became separated in the postwar period. In the absence of public housing following the city’s cancellation of the 1949 federal contract, urban redevelopment (renamed urban renewal in 1954) molded the spatial contours of modern Los Angeles. The transformation of Bunker Hill (see Map 5) from a blighted district to the city’s modern acropolis displays the shift toward modernism.

W

Shaping Modern Los Angeles: Public Housing and Urban Renewal Since its inception with the 1937 Housing Act, public housing construction had been accompanied by the slum-clearance equivalent elimination clause. Equivalent elimination mandated the demolition of one substandard housing unit for the construction of each unit of public housing. When appropriations for further public housing was voted down by Congress in 1939, large-scale slum clearance began to emerge as a distinct goal—with the legal infrastructure already in place—of public housing opponents. Los Angeles formally instituted the policy of equivalent elimination on March 27, 1941, with Ordinance 84,537.1 137

138

“Old Town, Lost Town”

In March 1944, Town Hall of Los Angeles expressed civic concerns with urban decay, blight, and slums and suggested the creation of a better city through urban redevelopment. Comparing private-sector redevelopment propositions, proposed federal statutes, and laws of other states, Town Hall posited a number of recommendations for California legislation as points of civic discussion. “Something radical, something bold, something new and progressive should be done by making a new section of the city out of an old and blighted area,” said Mayor Bowron in an August radio talk. He explained the mechanisms of a partnership between regulated private enterprise and city government to redevelop Los Angeles. “Think of a new apartment house section, with a new park and other improvements,” he enthused, “on Bunker Hill!”2

Map 5. Location of Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine.

“Old Town, Lost Town”

139

California’s 1945 Community Redevelopment Act garnered the support of such politically disparate organizations as the California AFL, the California CIO, the California Real Estate Association, and the California Chamber of Commerce. The diversity of these interests was reXected in the legislative process. Oliver Haskell traveled to Sacramento in 1944 and 1945 as a CHA lobbyist for the redevelopment bill. He recalled that whereas the CIO envisioned the inner city being redeveloped along the lines of community modernism, the AFL saw private enterprise as a mainstay of the redevelopment process. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce staunchly opposed the Community Redevelopment Act on economic, ideological, social, and political grounds and equated redevelopment with the threat of public housing.3 The act provided enabling legislation to allow cities and counties in the state to activate redevelopment proposals. It deWned “redevelopment” as the acquisition and improvement of land for residential, commercial, industrial, or public uses in the interest of the general welfare. Created by local legislation, a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) would be empowered with the rights to make plans, hold hearings, conduct investigations, and acquire and demolish (through

Table 7. Slum clearance accomplished by the CHA Description

Slum units cleared from original ten project sites constructed under the 1937 Housing Act Slum units cleared from permanent war housing sites Slum units cleared from nine sites constructed under the 1949 Housing Act Slum units cleared from sites of proposed Chavez Ravine and Rose Hill developments Off-site slum clearance certified by the city in connection with the original ten-site program Units vacated by CHA for slum clearance by the Department of Water and Power on Bunker Hill Units vacated by the CHA for police and health buildings at First and Main Total units vacated and eliminated

Number of units

816 20 991 1,135 2,652 639 563 6,816

Source: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Handbook of General Information (Los Angeles, October 1955), 44.

140

“Old Town, Lost Town”

eminent domain) sites for redevelopment. A petition to designate a redevelopment area would be followed by a public hearing called by the local legislative body. A planning commission would then prepare a tentative plan, resulting in another public hearing, and then a Wnal plan would be prepared by the CRA. No Wnancial appropriations accompanied the act, but it did provide the Wnancial and legislative framework for local agencies to accept local or federal funding for the purpose of redevelopment.4 In popular usage, the terms “blighted areas” and “slums” were often interchanged, yet they were representative of the distinct political interests involved in redevelopment legislation. Whereas “slums” (the object of the public housing program) referred to areas of substandard housing and their accompanying social maladies, “blighted areas” (the object of urban redevelopment) encompassed a wide range of land uses—industrial and commercial as well as residential—that were not functioning economically at their highest and best level. Thus, all slums were blighted, but not all blighted areas were slums. Blight was amorphously deWned by the CRA as including structures with defective design, deterioration, dilapidation, or a shifting use; areas of economic dislocation due to faulty planning; areas with a depreciated tax base; and areas with improper utilization of land. “At no point in the California Community Redevelopment Law,” commented an article in the Hastings Law Journal, “has the legislature given simple, brief, and concise deWnitions of the words ‘redevelopment’ and ‘blight.’”5 Something more than public housing was required to save Los Angeles from the social cancer of blight. “Public housing did a small part of the job of converting blighted areas into decent homes,” stated the California State Reconstruction and Re-employment Commission in the 1946 pamphlet Blighted! “But a small island in a sea of blight is bound to be engulfed and to revert quickly to blight.” A 1948 report by the CPC had explored deWnitions of blight and its social and economic cost to a municipality and had promoted the institution of a local redevelopment agency as a means of remedying blight. The implementation of redevelopment policy was, according to Mayor Bowron, “the greatest democratic problem confronting American municipalties today.” The CPC undertook a survey of seventy square miles of the central city and reported that slums or blighted areas made up 20 percent of the metropolitan area, embraced 33 percent of the population,

“Old Town, Lost Town”

141

and accounted for 45 percent of the city’s service costs while contributing only 6 percent of the tax revenues.6 The title and tone of the 1948 annual report of the CHA is indicative of the attempt to present public housing as a component of the initiative of redevelopment. There’s Nothing Sentimental about Your Cash Register pointed out that “public housing is good business” because “community redevelopment cannot proceed without public housing,” bad housing “chokes our industry, it blocks industrial expansion, it threatens property and earning, it lowers labor productivity.” Mayor Bowron emphasized that Los Angeles was “on the threshold of a new frontier: URBAN REDEVELOPMENT. . . . In stabilizing property values we will rid Los Angeles of bad housing.” Public housing comprised one element—economic necessity—of urban redevelopment. The humane aspects of public housing as a means to help people was subsidiary to its primary goal of improving the value of property.7 On April 15, 1948, the City Council passed a resolution declaring the need for a community redevelopment agency to operate in Los Angeles. On October 25, Mayor Bowron appointed the CRA’s initial

Figure 13. The cover of the CHA’s 1948 annual report projects the image that public housing, in addition to its humanitarian goals, was essential to the well-being of the urban economy. From CHA, There’s Nothing Sentimental about Your Cash Register, 1949.

142

“Old Town, Lost Town”

Wve commissioners, who were then conWrmed by the council on November 4. They were Howard Holtzendorff, executive director of the CHA; William T. Sesnon Jr., a cattle rancher from Chatsworth; Edward W. Carter, president of the Broadway Department Store; Philip M. Rea, president of the Los Angeles Realty Board; and Milton J. Brock Sr., past president of the NAHB. With the exception of Holtzendorff, the commissioners could hardly be described as sympathetic to public housing goals.8 The appointment and conWrmation of Rea, who advocated a constitutional amendment to legalize restrictive covenants, affronted the African American community. The NAACP and the Los Angeles Committee on Racial Equality sent telegrams to the City Council requesting that the council delay Rea’s conWrmation pending public hearings. Norman O. Houston, the president of the black-owned Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., sent a telegram to the council saying that “I DO NOT BELIEVE HE WOULD HAVE A FAIR AND IMPARTIAL ATTITUDE TOWARD MINORITY GROUPS IN DEALING WITH SLUM CLEARANCE AND RELOCATION OF CITIZENS.” The CIO’s Phil Connelly wrote to Mayor Bowron that Rea’s appointment was “a slap in the face to the whole concept of modern democratic housing which the [Community Redevelopment] Commission is supposed to promote.” Simon Eisner, the Wrst acting director of the CRA, recalled that before Rea would make a decision, “he would call people at the realty board to Wnd out if they would approve his actions.”9 A further incident highlighted the tensions between urban redevelopment and public housing. Charles B. Bennett, director of planning, argued in an article in The American City that lack of public housing would be “a deWnite deterrent to any large-scale redevelopment activity in the City of Los Angeles.” Robert Alexander, president of the CPC, appeared on KFI Radio and argued that the urban redevelopment program would not function properly in the absence of the public housing promised by California’s Proposition 14 on the November 1948 ballot. In an October 26 resolution, the City Council served notice that “the position of, and the speeches by, Robert E. Alexander in support of Proposition #14 are regarded by this Council as a reXection of his personal philosophy and have no ofWcial sanction given, or implied, by this legislative body.” Alexander aptly defended both himself and Proposition 14 in a letter to the council three days later, but the proposition was voted down the following week by the California electorate.10

“Old Town, Lost Town”

143

The council appropriated $20,000 to the newly formed CRA for administrative expenses during its initial Wscal year. The agency was empowered, as per the 1945 Community Redevelopment Act, to acquire, sell, lease, or exchange real or personal property; to clear buildings; to issue bonds; and to cooperate with the CPC. Working in conjunction with the CHA and the City Health Department, the CRA adopted an extensive list of fourteen completed and proposed redevelopment pilot studies, including Bunker Hill, which were originally developed by the CPC. The passage of the Housing Act of 1949 was greeted with enthusiastic anticipation by the CRA: “This helpful legislation provides much needed Wnancial assistance . . . [which] will unquestionably facilitate and accelerate the program of Community Redevelopment.”11 While the Housing Act of 1949 extended the public housing program, it introduced urban redevelopment into federal policy as well. Under Title I of the act, slum clearance was no longer coupled solely to public housing (as it had been with the 1937 Housing Act) but could now also be exploited for private housing or commercial or industrial uses. Title I of the 1949 Housing Act, wrote Jewel Bellush and Murray Hausknecht in 1967, “subsidized the purchase of prime land by private entrepreneurs, with the federal government paying the lion’s share of the subsidy.” “It Wnanced the destruction of America’s cities,” noted Alan Wolfe in 1981, “while sustaining a rebuilding machine that united politicians, bankers, and developers into a powerful coalition that took over the Democratic party.”12 Given the political strength of housing reformers in the immediate postwar period, it is doubtful that many liberals or leftists recognized the inherent dangers of redevelopment on which latter-day critics expounded. Simon Eisner recalled that the intent of the 1949 Housing Act was not to “set up great big areas of commercial redevelopment to the exclusion of housing. The ’49 act was a housing act! It’s all been lost, you know.” While the legislation allowed commercial, industrial, and residential land uses within blighted districts, housers saw public housing as the indispensable mainstay of redevelopment areas. Robert Weaver, formerly of the USHA, had called for a national urban redevelopment program that would supply an adequate amount of housing to construct new, multiracial, multiethnic, “democratic neighborhoods” that would cut across class lines and provide the building blocks for a new U.S. city. Ever prescient, Catherine Bauer felt that urban redevelopment was politically deWned by various interest groups that, like

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the fabled blind men feeling parts of the elephant, “made entirely different assumptions as to the essential nature and purpose of this legislation.” “Seldom has such a variegated crew of would-be angels,” commented Bauer, “tried to sit on the same pin at the same time.”13 The left-liberal popular front in Los Angeles was intensely interested in the redevelopment process. Planner Mel Scott saw redevelopment as offering the city the opportunity to massively reconstruct blighted areas as balanced residential neighborhoods. A New Look for the City (1949), by Drayton Bryant, Robert E. Alexander, Garrett Eckbo, and Reginald D. Johnson, and Rebuilding a City (1951), by Alexander and Bryant, proposed a citywide redevelopment program. Although the authors did not neglect areas of commercial, industrial, and civic land uses, they envisioned such districts as supplementing rather than dominating the community modernism of a people-oriented city. “Large enough areas must be cleared to create decent neighborhoods,” wrote Bryant and his colleagues in A New Look for the City, “not only satisfactory structures.” They suggested sixteen redevelopment projects, including Bunker Hill, in which both public and private housing were often the central elements. To relocate the residents affected by these projects, Alexander and Bryant stressed the need to redevelop Chavez Ravine as “the fulcrum on which to raise the entire long term redevelopment program.” As Tom Sitton observes, the 1951 publication of Rebuilding a City “could not have come at a more inopportune time.” The call for housing as an integral component of the redevelopment process was, in the aftermath of the public housing war, politically nulliWed.14 Mayor Bowron emphasized the difference between public housing and urban redevelopment in a 1951 radio address. A fundamental purpose of U.S. government was to promote the general welfare, particularly public health and crime prevention—a function, said Bowron, that the mayor was responsible to supervise in municipal affairs. Redevelopment had Bowron’s wholehearted support as blighted areas—“breeding places for crime, juvenile delinquency, tuberculosis, and various communicable diseases”—would be replaced by “new, modern, sanitary buildings.” Community redevelopment will make new sections [of the city] out of old, put attractive buildings in place of eyesores. A healthy, safe, wholesome environment is essential for the development of good citizens. Good citizenship is the most effective means of combating subversive and other foul inXuences.

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It was difWcult for Bowron “to understand opposition to a worthwhile, progressive program such as this.” He attributed that opposition to “a prejudice against public housing.”15 With the defeat of Proposition B in June 1952, Councilman John Holland urged city government “to move full speed ahead in the slum clearance program proposed as a substitute for the public housing scheme.” It was now the duty of the city, according to CASH chairman Frederick C. Dockweiler, to proceed with slum clearance. “The Committee Against Socialist Housing pledges its continued efforts for slum clearance by private enterprise.”16 On October 30, 1952, the council unanimously adopted two ordinances designed to strengthen municipal health and building regulations by requiring landlords to bring their property up to city standards or to face condemnation of the offending buildings. Frank Wilkinson, Wred two days earlier by the CHA, appeared in the audience as an interested private citizen. When interrogated by the press, Wilkinson questioned the strength and effectiveness of any such legislation “without an equally strong public housing program.” Despite pronounced antagonism on the part of the Small Property Owners League, which vociferously decried the inherent socialism of interference with property rights, Councilman Harold Harby maintained that “most of the opposition to this ordinance comes from those who want to encourage Federal public housing.” “They want to keep the slums,” explained Councilman Ed Davenport, “so they can use them as horrible examples to get more public housing.” To oppose the ordinances would, he stated, “give aid and comfort to the Communists.”17 The California legislature was somewhat perturbed at the difWculties local authorities were having in obtaining Wnancing for redevelopment projects. In 1951, the Joint Senate-Assembly Committee on Community Redevelopment and Housing Problems had recommended that a “constitutional amendment be presented to the voters allowing cities and counties to earmark increased taxes received from redeveloped areas as a fund to liquidate the community’s investment in the redevelopment.” Supported unanimously by the city’s pro– and anti–public housing factions, Proposition 18 was approved by voters on the November 4, 1952, California ballot to become Article XIII, Section 19 of the California Constitution. This institution of tax increment Wnancing allowed redevelopment agencies to receive and spend property tax revenues from the increased assessed value in redevelopment project areas for the retirement of the debt the agency incurred to undertake

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the project. In so doing, the CRA was able to Wnance projects independent of public approval of municipal bonds.18 As 1953 opened, Charles R. Shattuck of Los Angeles, the newly elected president of NAREB, proposed a four-point “free enterprise” program. “Realtors,” reported the Mirror, “on the defensive politically for 20 years, now are in a position to preach a positive program.” Shattuck’s plan included demands to liquidate public housing and to enforce building and safety codes in order to eradicate blight. In blighted areas that were “beyond reclamation,” Shattuck advocated legislation to allow the Wnancing of “private razing and reconstruction.” It would seem that with the 1953 death of the public housing program in Los Angeles, large-scale urban redevelopment without a housing component would come to the forefront of the political agenda.19 The 1954 Housing Act—referred to by Mark Gelfand as a “gift to the G.O.P.’s business friends in the cities”—seemed to embody the outline offered by Shattuck. Title III changed the name of redevelopment to “urban renewal” while greatly expanding the role of commercial over residential land uses in urban renewal areas. Federal assistance would be provided to localities for urban renewal projects of slum clearance and redevelopment, of rehabilitation and conservation, or of both types. As a prerequisite to the funding application, the HHFA mandated a “workable program” in which localities would utilize all means, including rehabilitation of still-useful housing, to eliminate slums and prevent blight. The Section 220 program provided 90 percent loans to assist the rehabilitation of existing dwellings. A mere 35,000 units of public housing were allocated, to be constructed only in communities with an active urban renewal project.20 The funding engendered by tax increment Wnancing combined with the 1954 Housing Act to allow the CRA to pursue the realization of modern Los Angeles in a somewhat autonomous manner. Although both large and small property owners encouraged the elimination of public housing and the CRA’s initial agenda, the agency would, as the 1950s progressed, increasingly come into conXict with the latter. The rehabilitation of existing property provided for in the 1954 Housing Act was slighted in favor of the large-scale clearance and redevelopment of “slash-and-burn” urban renewal. At the 1958 NAREB convention, Fritz Burns of that organization’s “Build America Better” campaign decried the “bulldozer approach” to urban renewal as “grandiose ventures seeking to plow under large city areas.” He called for the primacy of rehabilitation and conservation over redevelopment. Ignoring

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such pleas, the CRA rejected the support of small property owners, using urban renewal to deWne the space of modern Los Angeles. In so doing, low-income housing was replaced with commercial land uses on a monumental scale.21 Bunker Hill: From Residential Showcase to Literary Shithole to Housing Asset First subdivided by Prudent Beaudry in the 1860s, by the time of the real estate boom of the 1880s Bunker Hill had become a residential showcase for the upper-income professionals and merchants of Los Angeles. Their Victorian mansions were joined by hotels designed to attract eastern businessmen and pleasure seekers. The twentieth century saw the departure of the well-to-do for greener pastures on the Westside (for example, West Adams, Hollywood, Beverly Hills); the Hill was, wrote Pat Alder, left to become “predominately a refuge for pensioners, for transients, for derelicts—men who were, by one pathway or another, shunted from the mainstream.” The former mansions were partitioned into rooming houses, the hotels catered to a lowincome residential population, and some tenement housing was built in the 1920s and ’30s.22 Bunker Hill was seen in literary terms as a mysterious neighborhood inhabited by the socially marginal and the criminally deviant. In John Fante’s 1939 Ask the Dust, the protagonist Arturo Bandini characterized the Hill: “Dust and old buildings and old people sitting at windows, old people tottering out of doors, old people moving along the dark street.” Charles Bukowski, who lived on Bunker Hill on the eve of World War II, in his autobiographical Ham on Rye (1982) presented a rather unXattering picture of his neighborhood and the environs in which he pursued his alcoholic lifestyle: “Main Street, East 5th, Bunker Hill. Shitholes of America.” In the 1942 novel The High Window, Raymond Chandler described Bunker Hill as “old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town”: Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full cornered bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry Xoors are scratched and worn through the once glossy Wnish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the

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tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, sit the old men with faces like lost battles. In and around the old houses there are Xyblown restaurants and Italian fruitstands and cheap apartment houses and little candy stores where you can buy even nastier things than their candy. And there are ratty hotels where nobody except people named Smith and Jones sign the register and where the night clerk is half watchdog and half pander. Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match Xame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; Xy cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them.23

The hilltop residential district was a social and physical impediment to the commercial expansion of the prosperous and burgeoning central business district (CBD), pressing against the eastern and southern slopes of Bunker Hill. Cuts in the topography of the Hill—even its removal—were proposed in the 1910s and ’20s to facilitate the growth of the CBD. The Great Depression limited the Wnancial ability of the CBD to annex Bunker Hill. Instead, the residential potential of the Hill was brought to the fore. Proposals to regrade Bunker Hill for the beneWt of the CBD “would be a waste of funds,” asserted George Eberle in 1941: Bunker Hill is not a detriment to the downtown area, it is an asset. It supplies excellent sites for superior types of multiple dwellings commanding a view of the entire surrounding country. Such structures would . . . encourage the rehabilitation of near-by blighted areas.24

Bunker Hill residents supported the newly instituted public housing program in Los Angeles. In October 1939, the Bunker Hill Democratic Club requested that Mayor Bowron and the City Council take steps to appropriate the $25 million allocated by the USHA to the CHA. Less than two weeks later, more than two hundred Bunker Hill residents, sponsored by the Bunker Hill Village Coordinating Council on Housing, passed a resolution calling for slum clearance “to effect

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suitable low-rent housing and proper recreational and cultural centers.” In October 1940, the Bunker Hill Village Council sent a resolution to the City Council reiterating their request that “a low-rent government housing project be located in this area . . . for healthier and better fathers, mothers and children in the center of the city.”25 Initial Redevelopment Proposals In September 1949, CRA commissioner William T. Sesnon Jr. and Mayor Bowron jointly announced their intention to designate Bunker Hill as a redevelopment area. While the Hill would be redeveloped by private enterprise, backed by municipal credit, adequate relocation housing would be provided by the CHA, thanks to the approval that August of the 10,000-unit public housing program. “There will be no battle of Bunker Hill families to Wnd new housing when they are evicted to make way for the new . . . redevelopment program just launched,” the Herald and Express informed its readers. With the willingness of the CHA to engage actively in the redevelopment process, Mayor Bowron was quite optimistic about the future of the Hill, feeling that the CRA could now proceed “full speed ahead.” Nevertheless, Bowron recommended the enactment of both a State Housing Agency to ensure replacement housing and a State Redevelopment Agency to provide additional operating funds to the CRA.26 “Here is a major opportunity for Los Angeles,” wrote Alexander and Bryant in their 1951 proposal for the redevelopment of Bunker Hill. Their proposed project area comprised ninety-eight acres, bounded by Temple, Hill, Fifth, and Figueroa streets. According to 1940 census Wgures, 6,978 housing units were located in this area, of which 4,276 lacked a private bath or Xush toilet, 698 needed major repair, and 1,496 had no running water. The vast majority of the Hill’s residents—13,882 people, mostly single persons and childless couples—were tenants. The low incomes of this population was derived from old-age pensions, disability payments, or marginal employment. Once acquired by the city, Bunker Hill land was to be resold to private enterprise at a 50 percent write-off. Alexander and Bryant foresaw housing as the foundation of the Hill’s redevelopment: 9,836 new dwellings located in “limited-height, elevator apartment buildings so spaced and oriented as to take full advantage of views, sun and breeze.” “The problem of moving and rehousing [the tenant] population,” they wrote, “is the chief stumbling block to any redevelopment plan for Bunker Hill.”27 The CRA’s Bunker Hill redevelopment plan comprised seventy-three

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acres, bounded by First, Hill, Fourth, and Flower streets. The 8,050 people residing there included 196 Orientals, 12 Negroes, and 896 “Mexican Caucasians.” The median annual family income of $1,618 produced a very low tax base. There were 295 apartment buildings (containing 4,285 dwelling units) and ninety rooming houses (containing 2,077 rooms) in the area; more than 90 percent of these structures had been constructed prior to 1919. Median rental was thirty dollars a month for a dwelling unit and six dollars a week for a room. The Police Department reported that Bunker Hill had a high incidence of crime, vice, and (despite the sparse population of youth) juvenile delinquency. A serious Wre hazard due to the concentration of substandard structures existed on the Hill, according to the Fire Department. The Health Department described a relatively high rate of tuberculosis and a large number of inWrm people among the population. All these factors contributed to the condition of blight, a malaise to be remedied by the Hill’s redevelopment.28 Thirty-seven thirteen-story apartment buildings, containing 6,913 residential units, were the center of the CRA redevelopment proposals outlined by consulting engineer Henry Babcock. A new street layout, four underground garages for the tenants, and 43,560 square feet of retail space for stores to supply the needs of the apartment population constituted the project. Apartment living would be very different from that which had been nurtured in the city’s public housing program. Bunker Hill was envisioned as a colony of worker bees—a hive for downtown ofWce employees. “It is our opinion,” wrote Babcock, that a large percentage of the tenants will be dissociated from family life and will not be particularly interested in the type of community recreational facilities sometimes found in the so-called garden type of apartment house developments.

The new apartments would be rented for $65–$110 a month—far beyond the range of the Hill’s low-income population. The People’s World reported on a disenchanted “rank and Wler” who questioned the Democratic County Central Committee’s endorsement of the Wnancing of the CRA plans. The rank and Wler opined that modern housing should be built “for the people in the slum. Not this high-class residential district proposed.”29 In March 1951, Mayor Bowron used one of his weekly radio broadcasts to relate his positive experiences at a National Housing Policy Conference in St. Louis. Bowron gushed about the possibilities of Title I

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redevelopment for Los Angeles and the wonders that other cities were achieving with it. His enthusiasm was broadcast with the intent of coalescing support for Proposition C on the April 3, 1951, municipal primary ballot. Proposition C would authorize a $5 million revolving bond issue that would be used by the city to help cover the costs incurred by purchasing property on Bunker Hill, clearing blighted structures, and then reselling the sites to private investors. The calculated cost of acquiring the Hill was $15 million. Subtracting the estimated $4.5 million resale value of the property, the city would incur a deWcit of $10.5 million. This sum would be met by a $7 million Title I grant in addition to the Proposition C moneys. Any remaining funds would be used by the CRA to assist other projects.30 A broad range of organizations and institutions lauded and advocated Proposition C: the CHC, the Mirror, the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Herald and Express, the Broadway Department Store, the Times, the Home Builders Institute, and James Beebe of the Chamber of Commerce. The head of the Los Angeles Civil Defense was quoted in the Times on March 29 as advocating the passage of Proposition C because “each move toward slum clearance is better protection for defense in the atomic age.” He observed that the substandard housing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had added greatly to the catastrophe there. “Failure to pass Proposition C,” declared the city planning director, “would be a step over the cliff of municipal suicide.” A resident of Bunker Hill wrote to the Mirror expressing his hope for the defeat of Proposition C because his neighborhood was not in need of redevelopment. “There is no breeding place for crime, disease or Communism in the Bunker Hill area.”31 Proposition C received a simple majority vote but not the required two-thirds majority at the polls. This defeat, in addition to the fact that the CRA was having difWculties generating interest among investors, led to the reduction of the CRA staff from seven employees to three. Only three redevelopment projects were to be actively pursued. Salvation for the CRA’s Bunker Hill redevelopment project came with the 1952 Proposition 18 and the institution of tax increment Wnancing. Endorsed by Mayor Bowron, a reinvigorated CRA announced its intention to vigorously seek the redevelopment of nineteen blighted areas.32 The Los Angeles Acropolis At the beginning of his tenure as mayor, Norris Poulson expressed satisfaction with the success of the CRA’s Wrst undertaking, the Ann Street

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redevelopment project. In early 1954, following the suggestion of the city’s business leaders, Mayor Poulson approved a grandiose plan for the expanded redevelopment of Bunker Hill. At that time, Bunker Hill was to be the largest urban renewal project in the country. As Poulson recalled, the Bunker Hill project “raised the greatest furor in Los Angeles we had had since the housing Wght.” The mayor identiWed the opponents of Bunker Hill’s redevelopment as comprising the Hill’s residents, who wanted to remain in their central location, and the Hill’s property owners, who sought to retain their lucrative investment in the slums. The latter had been allied with Poulson in the 1953 mayoral campaign, but now, he recalled, “they were continually Wghting me on every move to progress.”33 The Downtown Community Association (DCA) marshaled an organized opposition to the plans to redevelop the Hill. Bunker Hill residents and businesspeople “are very worried about our community’s future,” James Hatton of the DCA wrote to Councilman Edward Roybal. “Plans are afoot to demolish our homes and shops in the interest of certain ‘projects.’” “Why must we lose our homes? Why must our business people be forced to the wall? Don’t we have a right to live? . . . You are a local candidate, asking people to vote for you. We, in return, are asking ‘Where do you stand for us?’” The DCA suggested an alternative plan for the Hill, a plan that would use Title I money to rehabilitate existing housing, construct new dwellings, and provide social amenities such as a park and a community center.34 The City Council’s Planning Committee proposed a public hearing regarding the redevelopment of Bunker Hill, to take place in the Council Chamber on November 10, 1954. DCA Xyers called on people to “Resist the Rape of our Downtown Community”: “Thousands of the poor and aged will be forcibly dispossessed to provide mansions and gaming rooms for the rich.” DCA constituents were implored to “Resist the Destruction of our Neighborhood! Protect our Homes and Community! Stop the Land Grab . . . aimed at Hurting so many Poor! . . . PROTEST! RESIST! INSIST!” On November 3, the Planning Committee canceled the hearing without rescheduling. “WE’VE GOT THE SCHEMING POLITICIANS ON THE RUN!” broadcast the DCA triumphantly. “We’ve won the Wrst round to save our homes and community . . . SAVE OUR HOMES! SAVE OUR COMMUNITY! BUILD A BETTER COMMUNITY!”35 In a meeting on November 2, the CRA passed Resolution 48 approving an application for federal loans and grants from the HHFA under the Housing Act of 1954 for a Bunker Hill urban renewal project. The

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application was for $33 million in federal funds, which would be supplemented by $7 million of credit pledged by the city, to purchase and clear properties, establish a new street pattern, and prepare that property for resale to private investors. The resale price—estimated to be $19 million—would be applied against the federal loan. The remaining $14 million would then be considered a grant from the HHFA. The agency requested that the council concur with the CRA’s application by resolution, thus presenting a city uniWed in its intent to pursue the project.36 On November 15, the City Council considered the CRA’s request to authorize the loan application for the HHFA. The CRA presented Bunker Hill in a most disparaging manner: as an unhealthy slum, a Wretrap, and an area well known to the vice squad as a haven for prostitutes, juvenile delinquents, narcotics peddlers, and “moral offenders of both sexes.” The subsequent blight was so bad that it could be redressed neither by conservation nor by rehabilitation. The total redevelopment of Bunker Hill was touted as the only remedy. Only $250,000 was allocated for the relocation of the area’s 11,057 lowincome residents. CRA chairman Sesnon emphasized to the council that the Hill’s redevelopment plans were still in the formative stage and that the council would have the opportunity to approve or reject the Wnal draft, subsequent to public hearings conducted by the CRA.37 The council passed the resolution with a vote of 14–1, with Councilman Roybal being the lone opponent. Maria Gallegos de Hillary wrote to Roybal to thank him for his stand against the Bunker Hill project: “If it should go through none of us in the old neighborhoods of the town would feel safe. . . . One would think that this were Russia where a community of individuals can be liquidated at the whim of a planner. . . . Yo no soy en su districto [sic], pero soy de su raza” (I’m not in your district, but I’m of your race). An adviser to Roybal observed in a memo, “This is the Public Housing Authority story all over again, except under public housing the tenant gets the subsidy— under redevelopment the subsidy goes to the landlord.” “We wanted more PUBLIC HOUSING,” wrote Arthur Schott in a November 22 letter to U.S. Senator Homer E. Capehart (R-Indiana), “but the Chandlers (LA Times) and the Hearsts (Examiner interests) who rule Southern California are in supreme command. . . . So for the interests of the 95% Americans who live on ‘Bunker Hill’ in downtown Los Angeles, your party SHOULD NOT furnish funds from the Federal Gov’t to further this terrible rape of Bunker Hill to the tune of 33 million dollars or even 33 cents.”38

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Charges of socialism, bureaucracy, or “stateism” were not orchestrated by the press. “Private industry would do the job [of Bunker Hill redevelopment], which is as it should be,” enthused the Times, “as distinct from the socialized public housing program which Los Angeles voters emphatically rejected.” “Curiously enough against this background,” observed critic Ruth Harmer, approval of the Bunker Hill project was not a signal for heads to roll. No billboards blossomed with propaganda legends; no property owners groups were organized to march on the City Hall; no voters were urged to refuse to pay another man’s rent. No editorials alerted the city to “creeping Socialism,” and not a single congressional investigator was called in.39

Speaking at the invitation of Mayor Poulson, CRA chairman Sesnon addressed the mayor’s November 21 radio audience. After the council’s action of November 15 and the notable absence of citizen participation therein, Sesnon sought to pacify civic concerns by rationalizing the Bunker Hill project. He explained in detail how the loan request would be used. The project costs would cover land clearance, leveling, and grading; street alignment; and installation of utilities—“everything needed to be done to make the land ready for purchase and new construction by private enterprise.” As for the paltry sum squandered on resident relocation, Sesnon assured his audience that only 7 percent of the Hill’s 11,000 inhabitants would need help for reestablishment in new dwellings: “So, you see, this may not be as difWcult as you might think at Wrst.” Besides, chances were the displacees would Wnd better housing elsewhere: “So, in the long run, everyone would beneWt.”40 The Planning Committee of the City Council scheduled a public hearing on the renewal plans of Bunker Hill on April 13, 1955. Fritz Burns, who owned several pieces of property on the Hill, wrote to Councilman Holland and Councilman Roybal that “my son and I have successfully demonstrated that the older homes on Bunker Hill, with only a very few exceptions, can be successfully rehabilitated.” He advocated a program of rehabilitation and conservation: “It is not in the best interests of the people and a waste of taxpayer’s money to tear down hundreds of good old houses to eliminate a comparative handful of unsalvageable ones unless you want to establish the precedent of tearing down all buildings Wfty years old or older.” Small property owners, represented by the Apartment Association of Los Angeles County, the Home Builders Institute, and the Los Angeles Realty Board,

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likewise advocated a rehabilitation of their property and opposed urban renewal as an infringement on property rights.41 Mrs. Molly Flora, an eighty-year-old widow, had lived on the Hill since 1908 and owned a house from which she rented out eight rooms. She had attended the council hearings, quietly listening to the proceedings but not voicing her own concerns. Afraid of losing her property, which was her only source of income, she wrote to the council two days after the meeting. “So will you please make it possible to keep it? . . . I know I don’t have to [sic] long to stay on this Earth. Then I’ll have nothing to say.” “Bunker Hill is simply taking from the small owners and giving it to the big ones to exploit for proWt,” Mrs. Luz Minoz Drake wrote to Councilman Holland. Those most affected by the project, she observed, would be the elderly citizens living on the Hill. “The oldsters need a friend. Why not be that friend?” Many Bunker Hill residents were not conWdent in their future as work proceeded toward a tentative redevelopment plan. “There’s no room for anything old in this town,” one elderly resident told a Times reporter. “Especially old people,” agreed another. “Where are we all supposed to go?”42 In May 1956, Henry Babcock issued an engineering report that sought to determine what combination of land uses on Bunker Hill would produce the maximum monetary returns. This objective could be achieved by converting the residential property to ofWce buildings, motels, hotels, parking areas, a civic trade plaza and auditorium, and medium- and high-priced apartment houses. The apartment site would contain 7,000 furnished and unfurnished units of efWciency, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments, located in thirteen-story buildings, with monthly rents ranging from $96 to $155. Because of the estimated 20 percent differential between what could be brought in from rent and what was necessary to cover the cost of development, Babcock recommended that the residential plaza initially be used for open-air parking and then later, when demand developed, be converted to a residential function.43 Published shortly after Babcock’s study, the tentative plans for Bunker Hill redevelopment dealt with the topics of property acquisition, tenant relocation, project management, structural demolition, site preparation, land disposition, owner participation, and Wnance. The proposed redeveloped land uses—residential, commercial (including hotel and motels), public, and alternative—were essentially the same as those advanced by Babcock. The CRA’s objectives for the Hill’s redevelopment were very revealing of the nature of corporate modernism: One

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objective was to “[change] a tax liability to a tax asset of the people of the city by increasing the tax revenue many times.”44 In response to the CRA’s tentative plan, some of the Hill’s small property owners submitted an “Alternative Redevelopment Plan.” Prepared by attorney Charles E. McClung, the alternative plan accepted the principle of redevelopment but sought to provide for the rehabilitation and conservation of properties in the project area by the property owners themselves. The Wnancing to realize the alternative plan was available, as stipulated in the 1954 Housing Act, by means of long-term, low-interest FHA loans to property owners. Los Angeles already had a “workable urban renewal program” since the passage of Ordinances 100,676 and 100,677 by the City Council on October 30, 1952. The relocation of those displaced by the alternative plan’s renewal proposals would not be a problem because occupants would be permitted to remain in rehabilitated structures. The objectives of the alternative plan—to eliminate substandard housing conditions and blight—would be accomplished by the existing property owners “without giving large corporate investors an unfair competitive advantage by means of federal subsidies.”45 In assessing the Alternative Redevelopment Plan, the City Council’s Planning Committee asked: “Would rehabilitation, deWned as individual property owners bringing their properties up to the building code, solve the problem of blight in the Bunker Hill area?” The answer was “No, for these reasons: Location—in the front yard of the City; Mixed uses—a constant cause of blight; Street pattern and street conditions— inadequate for present and future trafWc demands; Economic misuse of land.” The Alternative Redevelopment Plan “has received only the most cursory examination by the CRA,” McClung complained to Councilman Roybal. “Their rejection is not based on the contention that the proposed Alternative Plan would not eliminate any blight conditions that may now exist, but rather . . . that the mixed character of uses and individual ownership of land parcels would be retained under the Alternative Plan.”46 On July 10, 1956, the City Council began a public hearing regarding the CRA’s tentative plan for Bunker Hill. Speaking in favor of the CRA redevelopment were representatives of city government, downtown commercial interests, organized labor, liberal civic and professional organizations, and the like. Max Mont of the Jewish Labor Council and Loren Miller of the NAACP stated that there should be

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no discrimination by race, color, or creed against the occupants of the completed project.47 The opponents of the CRA’s tentative plan included property owners on Bunker Hill, many of whom had submitted alternative plans, the Los Angeles Apartment House Association, and the Los Angeles Realty Board. “This [redevelopment] law was all primarily made for the purpose of protecting the interests of the so-called poor people,” H. Wm. Hess told the council. “It was not meant to be a boon doggling project that would enable the gentlemen, while they sat behind the mahogany doors of the California Club or the Jonathan Club, to arrange amongst themselves who would divide the poor man’s land.” The hearings were postponed until August 23 in order to give the CRA an opportunity to evaluate the alternative plans. However, in a July 27 report, the CRA apparently jumped the gun and recommended that the City Council reject all the alternatives to the CRA-sponsored tentative plan.48 With a vote of 12–2 on November 7, 1956, the City Council approved the CRA’s tentative plan for the redevelopment of Bunker Hill. Councilman Roybal based his dissent on the inadequacy of plans to relocate the 11,000 people residing on the Hill. The tentative plan gave only cursory and general acknowledgment of any responsibility for rehousing those displaced by redevelopment and offered no speciWc proposals to do so. CRA chairman Sesnon responded, much as he had two years previously, that these were only tentative proposals. Roybal’s objections would, Sesnon maintained, be addressed when the Wnal plans were presented to the council.49 Prefacing the approval and adoption of the CRA’s Wnal plans for the Bunker Hill project, the City Council undertook a series of public hearings from June 24, 1958, until January 7, 1959. Alternative plans were resubmitted to the City Council, and tenants voiced their confusion as to their impending displacement.50 Mary Tipton wrote to the council on August 11 of the position of Bunker Hill tenants who, like herself, were caught between the adequacy of their current housing and its annihilation by the CRA: “I am one of the old people who live up on the hill (Bunker Hill) and I am very happy. I have a nice apt. But the owener [sic] of the building will not do any thing [sic] to the halls or put in a new elevator. What I would like to know is why cant [sic] the City get these buildings and Wx them up for us.” She was concerned about where she would be relocated in

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the city’s public housing projects. “I understand that people can live now in the projects. I work at our Baptist Christian Youth Center in Eliso [Aliso] Village while that is a wonderfull [sic] place for Negroes and Mexicans, no white people want to live there. Those people seem to be able to get a place to live easier than the white old people. And there is a large number of us who live here on the Hill and we all like to live up here. I may not get an answer to this. But am writing it any how [sic].” On August 19, attorney Phill Silver Wled a petition by tenants opposing the Bunker Hill plan.51 On August 14, attorney Phill Silver addressed the council on behalf of the alternative plan of his clients, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldman. Even though the California Appellate Court had upheld the constitutionality of the state’s redevelopment law (in San Francisco’s 1954 Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes), Silver asserted that the “test is still whether the law is a good law and good for the people.” He asked the

Figure 14. Mayor Norris Poulson and CRA executive director William T. Sesnon Jr. view a depiction of the proposed redevelopment of Bunker Hill, 1956. (Photographer: Bill Walker; Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library)

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council to consider “whether the provisions of this [CRA] plan before you is a legitimate housing act or a land deal, which will make millions of dollars for private developers after thousands of unfortunates have been evicted from the homes in which they are now residing.” Was it morally right to condemn a person’s property for public use under the powers of eminent domain and then hand it over to a private corporation for private proWt? Silver reminded the council that in 1952, Mayor Poulson, then a congressman, had labeled “the so-called slum clearance and public housing” program as “the worst political racket ever devised.” At least the aims and purposes of public housing, opined Silver, provided a public use when eminent domain was used in slum clearance. But what public use was being served by the slum clearance in the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project?52 On November 14, the CRA made a rebuttal to the concerns regarding relocation that had been expressed by project opponents. Surveying the current housing market, the CRA found that seventy apartments were listed daily for rent at thirty to Wfty dollars a month in neighborhoods near Bunker Hill; that there were about 3,500 vacancies each year in the public housing projects (about 2,150 displacees would be eligible); and that there was a high vacancy and turnover rate for cheap hotel rooms and small apartments in the downtown area. “We believe,” asserted the agency, “that good relocation housing is available for the Bunker Hill site residents in close-in neighborhoods, in all types of accommodations, and at fair and reasonable rates.” The CRA would provide a staff of fourteen to oversee referrals of those to be relocated and would allocate up to one hundred dollars per individual ($2,500 for businesses and institutions) for moving expenses. There were, estimated the agency, about 9,500 persons living in 7,300 housing units in the project area. Over a three-year period, an average of nine people, or seven accommodations, per day would be displaced. Compared to the fact that 1,400 people per day were moving into growing Los Angeles at the time, the CRA concluded that the relocation problem on Bunker Hill was inWnitesimal.53 In his Wnal arguments against the CRA plan, Silver railed against the legal, economic, and moral paradoxes that the council now confronted. It was a politically contentious point for Silver that the city attorney had advised the council that having accepted the CRA’s tentative plan, they had no power to alter, modify, or change the Wnal plan in order to address the concerns of CRA opponents. Silver observed

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that in spite of the California ruling, three state supreme courts— Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina—had interpreted redevelopment to be unconstitutional if residential land was taken by eminent domain for commercial purposes. By this token, Silver suggested that the CRA’s plan was unconstitutional. “I submit,” Silver chastised the council, “that if you approve the plan [of the CRA] in its present form, that if you surrender your inherent right to have a full and free voice in what you will vote for, if you stuff your ears from the cries of the people on Bunker Hill who ask only for justice under the law, you will bring shame and dishonor upon this body.”54 On March 31, 1959, the City Council adopted, with a vote of 12– 2, Ordinance 113,231, which approved the Wnal Bunker Hill redevelopment plan. Mayor Poulson chortled that the Bunker Hill project was “one of the great forward movements we have made,” while CRA chairman Sesnon happily assured the council that “you will have no regrets at any time over the action you have just taken.” The project would, glowingly editorialized the Times, “transform 136 downtown acres of blight into the kind of residential, commercial and civic layout downtown Los Angeles ought to have . . . a distinct Los Angeles version of an acropolis.” The American City called the project “a modern urban jewel.” At $315 million, the Bunker Hill redevelopment project called for a twenty-four-acre residential plaza containing 3,100 modern apartments; a sixteen-acre commercial plaza of high-rise ofWce buildings that would employ some 50,000 persons; and twenty acres of sites for motels and a hotel.55 During May and June 1959, six court cases challenging the CRA’s Bunker Hill Urban Renewal project were Wled in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Consolidating these cases with an action petitioned by the CRA in December, trial proceedings began on November 1, 1960. The memorandum decision of April 20, 1961, declared that the CRA was lawfully established and entitled to function under the Community Redevelopment Law and that the tentative plan for Bunker Hill Urban Renewal was therefore legal and valid. Appeals were Wled in the superior court shortly thereafter and moved to the state’s supreme court in 1962.56 The state supreme court exhaustively reviewed the project, focusing on areas of contention that had arisen from the superior court trials. The court examined the scope of the project; Sesnon’s eligibility to serve as a CRA commissioner; the sufWciency of the CRA’s publication notice for the tentative plan hearing; the breadth of the CRA’s

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deWnition of blight; the application of this deWnition to the area south of Fourth Street; the compliance of the Wnal plan with the Health and Safety Code; owner participation in the Wnal plan; the fairness of hearings before the City Council; the absence of a jury trial; and the inability of objectors to recover costs. In 1964, the lower court’s rulings were afWrmed, leaving the CRA as the legal master of Bunker Hill.57 As of November 1964, the CRA had permanently resettled 73.7 percent of its relocation workload of 4,500 residential units housing approximately 6,000 persons. It had made 2,196 payments totaling a rather miserable $53,596. Liberal Councilman Roybal, joined by conservative Councilman Holland, had been opponents of the Bunker Hill Redevelopment project. Whereas Holland was most concerned with the rights of the Hill’s small property owners, Roybal based his hostility on inadequate public participation and on the project’s inadequate relocation provisions, failure to provide senior citizen housing, and use of public money to assist private development.58 Through the 1960s and 1970s, Bunker Hill lay essentially barren. Investment accelerated greatly during the real estate boom that crystallized in the latter half of the 1980s. The project has been amended

Figure 15. Contemporary Bunker Hill skyline, looking southwest from Hill Street near Third. (Photograph by the author)

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by the City Council thrice, in 1968, 1970, and 1986, and is the city’s oldest active redevelopment project. Currently there are in Bunker Hill 11.3 million square feet of ofWce and retail space, 2,200 hotel rooms, and 3,255 residential units, as well as such cultural facilities as the Museum of Contemporary Art. The project’s end date is set for June 25, 2015.59 Conclusion The emerging cityscape of Bunker Hill provides a vivid documentation of the inherent antagonisms of a class-deWned modernism. The Left’s vision of community modernism was annihilated by the ascendant reality of corporate modernism. Whereas the former was characterized by a people-oriented redevelopment with public housing as a cornerstone, the latter wielded urban renewal for the beneWt of large-property interests. “And the titans of downtown Los Angeles,” observed an article in Frontier magazine of the CRA’s plans on Bunker Hill, “watching their land values go up without investment on their part, will bask smiling in the warm glow of civic pride.” Corporate modernism utilized public housing only as a dumping ground for those economic miscreants who could not survive in modern Los Angeles. With urban renewal threatening parts of the slum market, small property owners found themselves, along with remnants of the fragmenting Roosevelt coalition, in ineffective opposition to the policies of corporate modernism.60 With the demise of the Left, who would give political voice to those disaffected by the direction of modern Los Angeles? And how would this opposition inXuence the formal political structure of the city?

CHAPTER 6

This Modern Marvel: Chavez Ravine and the Politics of Modernism

ollowing the 1953 mayoral victory of Norris Poulson, the city acquired the land on which the Elysian Park Heights public housing project in Chavez Ravine was to be built. By the end of the decade, it was well on its way to becoming Dodger Stadium. The transformation of land use in Chavez Ravine, from housing to prestige sports facility, parallels the transformation of the vision of the community modernism of the Left to the vision of corporate modernism in Los Angeles. Concurrently, there was a metamorphosis in popular political form. With the demise of the Left’s inXuence on the formal political structure of the modern city, a new political form outside of the party was developing: the movement.

F

Mayor Poulson and Modern Los Angeles A large-scale corporate modernism in Los Angeles was to Xourish under Mayor Poulson. The housing war had left deep cleavages in the City Council between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans. Poulson recalled that since as mayor he did not wish to work with a divided council, he “personally worked closely with the liberals and used [Times reporter] Carl[ton Williams] to exert his inXuence on the conservatives.” The new mayor nudged the divided City Council away from its traditional political constituencies and directed it instead toward the corporate modernization of downtown. Bunker Hill redevelopment, the realization of the freeway system within the central city, 163

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and the construction of prestige sports facilities in Chavez Ravine were the principal elements in the modernist project. Meshing the interests and efforts of business, industry, and government, such a venture would create, as Poulson would pontiWcate, in a 1956 speech, “a downtown district unrivaled in the world.”1 Many people would be adversely affected by this corporate modernist vision of Los Angeles. The poor, the elderly, and minorities who lived downtown found themselves lost in the political shufXe and confronted by a “progress” that was clearly detrimental, even lethal, to their communities. Yet the consequent condemnation and clearance of inner-city communities were essential, as the Times rationalized the 1959 evictions at Chavez Ravine, or else “freeways could not be built. . . . One property owner’s refusal to sell could block a Bunker Hill development. The Civic Center would have been impossible. And of course a baseball stadium or any other spacious project would be precluded in Chavez Ravine.” Condemnation and clearance “is an orderly, democratic process,” editorialized the Mirror-News, “necessary for the common good.” The entire city might become a vast slum “if rule-orruin fanatics can roadblock progress for any reason that occurs to a warped mind.” Opponents to modernization appeared as obstructionists to the corporate vision of modern Los Angeles.2 Chavez Ravine: Enchantment and Squalor Chavez Ravine was named for Julian Chavez, city councilman between 1850 and 1875 and the owner of a ranch in the hills about two miles to the north of the Los Angeles Plaza. The land was subdivided in 1912–13 by Marshall Stimson, who sold lots for homes to about two hundred Mexican families who had been living on the Los Angeles River bottom. The California Commission of Immigration and Housing disapprovingly observed of Chavez Ravine in 1919 that the “neighborhood is entirely isolated by hills from the rest of the city. Here, after a summer of primitive freedom, the children’s minds have to be reclaimed from the desert waste to at least a sluggish interest in education.” Chavez Ravine was composed of three distinct owner-built neighborhoods, more than half of whose structures were built during the 1920s and 1930s. Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop were, despite their proximity to downtown, semi-rural villages with poultry, livestock, and subsidence gardening.3 Postwar Chavez Ravine was an extremely close-knit but impoverished community lacking basic urban services. “The atmosphere of the

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ravine,” wrote Carey McWilliams, “is ancient, antiquated, a survival— something pushed backward in time and subordinated.” Alice GreenWeld McGrath, known to community residents because of her work in the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, assisted in a campaign to have the city extend bus service to Chavez Ravine in 1946–47. She found the community to be delightful and was impressed by the neatness and cleanliness of the houses and the pride in homeownership. But the care and upkeep invested by the residents in their neighborhood was no match for their poverty. The poor housing overwhelmed the broader perspective of the stable and intimate community life that permeated Chavez Ravine. Robert Alexander, co-architect of the Elysian Park Heights public housing project, recalled that “children growing up in that area must have had an enchanted life. . . . In a way it was an idyllic situation, in spite of its squalor.”4 With the passage of California’s Community Redevelopment Act, the CPC considered Chavez Ravine as a site for redevelopment. In 1948 the Department of Health named Chavez Ravine as the worst slum area in the city, and the CPC stated that “Chavez Ravine is a logical selection as a redevelopment area . . . because of the high predominance of blighting inXuences, and also because of the substantial amount of vacant land and open spaces in the area.” In 1948, Chavez Ravine’s population of 3,764 (nearly two-thirds of them of Mexican origin and about one-third Anglo, with a scattering of African Americans and twenty-two other minority groups) lived in 1,145 dwellings—54.4 percent of which were classiWed as substandard. Included in this percentage were shacks made of packing cases, chicken coops, trailers without wheels, and tents. Wood was used for both heating and cooking in many homes; 390 of the dwellings had no toilet, 377 had no toilet or bath, and 174 had no running water.5 As part of the CPC’s tentative plan, Drayton Bryant, Robert Alexander, Garrett Eckbo, and Reginald Johnson put forward redevelopment proposals for Chavez Ravine. They saw Chavez Ravine as the cornerstone for a humane and democratic citywide redevelopment program. It would provide modern housing not only for the existing inhabitants of Chavez Ravine but also for displacees from a string of redevelopment projects from the Eastside through Bunker Hill to Alpine Street. “Should the suggested plan be followed,” wrote the CPC, “clean, light and modern housing accommodations will be available for approximately 9,000 people, as compared with the present population of some 3,800 now living in the same area under far from satisfactory

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conditions.” Bryant, Alexander, Eckbo, and Johnson ominously warned of the consequences of a redevelopment program for private purposes that “will likely arouse not only the desperate hostility of the site occupants, but the disapproval of the public at large.”6 Bryant and his colleagues advocated that 3,114 dwelling units be built on a 372-acre site “to create a desirable residential community, with two elementary schools, shopping centers, community facilities, and a variety of physical types of housing at various economic levels. In short . . . a diversiWed, balanced community.” The development would accommodate the young, the old, families with children, and childless adults. “For the survival of our democracy,” the authors continued, “it should contain groups of varying religious, language, and ethnic backgrounds.” They recommended the following housing types and tenures: individual ownership of single homes and of some of the small multiple-unit buildings, private capital investment in larger apartment buildings, public low-rent housing, and a cooperative development.7 The Communist Party had established a presence in Chavez Ravine with a well-deserved reputation for effective community organizing. When the area had been named as a CRA study area, talk of the demolition of their homes, reported the People’s World, “threw many Chavez residents into a panic.” Only public housing, argued the paper, and not private redevelopment would beneWt the community’s inhabitants.8 On July 24, 1950, the CHA sent letters, in both Spanish and English, to inform residents that Chavez Ravine was to be the site of a public housing development. This rendered moot the previous tentative redevelopment plans. The district’s inhabitants were assured they would receive assistance in relocation. Three neighborhood ofWces, located in Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop, were open night and day during the following week to answer any questions that those affected by the project might have. Elysian Park Heights was announced by the press in August. Though Howard Holtzendorff told La Opinión that the majority of Chavez Ravine’s residents were in favor of the modern housing the CHA was offering, the area’s property associations continued to protest against the project. The Times editorially attacked the plans of the CHA. Although acknowledging the substandard housing conditions that gave the scheme “in theory . . . commendable aspects,” the paper claimed that Chavez Ravine was not a “slum” in the classic sense because it was not thickly populated, nor were its

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Figure 16. Drawing of the proposed Elysian Park Heights public housing project in Chavez Ravine, designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander. (USC Regional History Center)

inhabitants degraded. The project should “be shelved indeWnitely, if not forever.”9 In December 1950, the CHA began to purchase properties in Chavez Ravine. Frank Wilkinson, with interpreter Ignacio Lopez, painstakingly visited individual families and community meetings to offer Wrst choice in the occupancy of the proposed Elysian Park Heights to those eligible. Named by the CHA as the ofWcial liaison between that organization and the Communist Party, Wilkinson was grateful to the party for its efforts to convince Chavez Ravine residents of the advantages of Elysian Park Heights.10 Designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, the Elysian Park Heights project was to contain 3,364 housing units for 17,000 people on a 278-acre site. Incorporated within the project were to be sites for three churches, three schools, kindergartens, nurseries, a Community Hall, a 1,500-person auditorium, and a commercial center. The apartments were to be arranged in twenty-four thirteen-story towers and 163

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two-story buildings. The scale and population density and the use of apartment towers in this project were unprecedented in CHA history.11 Neutra saw high-rise housing as a design solution to the problems of population density and open space. “However romantic it may be to dream of retaining the present charm of rural backwardness,” he wrote of Chavez Ravine, “the area cannot be redeveloped even with suburban bungalows. A realistic use of the site by any developer will require an urban housing solution to suit the location and to take advantage of the beautiful but very hilly terrain.” Nicholas Cirino, development director of the CHA, wrote to Neutra and Alexander warmly praising “the basic concept for the design for the thirteen story buildings as evolved by your ofWce,” a design that, wrote Cirino, other architectural Wrms under contract with the CHA were studying and emulating at Rose Hill Courts Extension and Aliso Apartments.12 Elysian Park Heights high-rises were a focus for political, professional, and popular contention. Councilman John Holland, the Wrst city father to oppose the city’s public housing program, testiWed that “When I learned of the 13-story buildings, I became an opponent of public housing.” Architect Clarence Stein asked the project’s site planner, Simon Eisner, how he could morally and ethically justify placing people used to living on the ground—with gardens, chickens, and small animals—in high-rise buildings. Eisner recalled Neutra convincing the principal of Palo Verde School that the public housing project in Chavez Ravine would preserve the lifestyle and culture of the district. “I sat there thinking in the back of my mind of those twenty-four thirteenstory buildings and didn’t know whether to choke or what.”13 Four hundred to Wve hundred persons attended an April 26, 1951, hearing in which the CHA sought CPC approval of the Chavez Ravine site. Protesters, mainly homeowners, carried placards bearing such slogans as “What are boys Wghting for [in the Korean War], their homes or the housing projects?” or “MacArthur is out, are we next?” “I didn’t have to ask the government to pay for my home,” asserted Chavez Ravine resident Mabel Horn. “I went out and got it for myself.” G. C. Baumann, an attorney for one of the homeowners, stated that he would not “want the creeping cancer of socialism right next to property I own.” The site was advocated by the Community Services Organization, veterans’ organizations, labor unions, and city health ofWcers. Speaking for the CHA, Frank Wilkinson characterized Chavez Ravine as not a slum but, because of the preponderance of substandard housing, deWnitely as blighted. Msgr. Thomas O’Dwyer emphasized

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the dilapidation of the majority of Chavez Ravine’s houses and contrasted this with the modern, sanitary, and “decent” housing that Elysian Park Heights would offer.14 In May 1951, ten Chavez Ravine homeowners protested the loss of their homes by staging a sitdown strike in the ofWce of Mayor Bowron. While expressing his sympathy with their plight, Bowron pointed to the social need for modern housing, particularly for veterans, that the public housing project would fulWll. Bowron assured the homeowners that they would be compensated with a fair value for their property.15 Chavez Ravine was a focal point in the Proposition B vote of June 1952. Herbert Baus of Baus and Ross, the public relations Wrm that coordinated the “No on B” campaign, recalled arguing against the CHA’s going “into the virgin territory of Chavez Ravine and build[ing] this huge project of public housing [that] would in every way create the seedbed of a vast slum.” In June 1952, Chavez Ravine resident Bertha Withers wrote to thank both the voters for the “No on B” victory and the Times for its antipathy to public housing. The rugged individualism of the homeowners in Chavez Ravine reXected, she felt, the American spirit: “We are the kind of people a city or nation should want, rather than to abuse us and chase us out of the country to make way for people who won’t even try to carry their own weight.”16 By August of that year, Chavez Ravine was becoming a ghost town as many residents accepted the CHA’s resettlement offers. However, several families, unsatisWed with the value of the offers, refused to settle. While the homes of their former neighbors were demolished, these homeowners awaited the outcomes of court rulings as to the enforceability of condemnations in Chavez Ravine.17 In April 1951, the CHA had Wled a complaint against Mosier Meyer, his wife Lois, Richards Development Corporation, and C. G. Willis and Sons, Inc., because of their refusal to concede to the CHA’s condemnation proceedings for the construction of Elysian Park Heights. The matter came to trial in Judge Otto Emme’s superior court at the end of August 1952. The plaintiff’s legal strategy was to argue the necessity of condemnation for public use. The CHA called Frank Wilkinson as an expert witness; he testiWed as to the housing conditions of Chavez Ravine in order to establish the need for the proposed public housing project. During cross-examination, Wilkinson was ordered to divulge the particulars of his political afWliations. “We have a right,” asserted Felix McGinnis, attorney for the plaintiffs, “to show a connection with any group, political or otherwise, which might have inXuenced

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his [Wilkinson’s] views on public housing.” Dropping Wilkinson as an expert witness, the CHA called Mayor Bowron and Howard Holtzendorff to establish the need for the public housing project.18 Attempting to show that there was no current need for public housing in the city, the defendants called four anti–public housing councilmen—Davenport, Holland, Cronk, and Henry—to so testify. Emme ruled, however, that the councilmen could not impeach themselves by reneging on the 1949 contract the council had approved. Home builder Fritz Burns was very happy to support the contentions of the defense. Armed with volumes of reports, graphs, and charts, Burns testiWed that based on his expert knowledge as a home builder and realtor, there was no need for public housing, neither in Los Angeles generally nor in Chavez Ravine speciWcally. In cross-examination, CHA attorneys stressed Burns’s limitations as an expert witness: As a builder of suburban housing communities (for example, Panorama City and Westchester) only in vacant locales for white middle-income homebuyers who did not utilize public transportation, Burns was essentially ignorant of the housing needs of those, like the residents of Chavez Ravine, whom the CHA would serve. On September 19, Judge Emme found that the acquisition of the contested parcel of land was necessary for public use. A jury was empaneled to determine the monetary compensation for the CHA. In November, $150,000 was awarded. This legal victory proved short-lived, because the Elysian Park Heights housing project was canceled by Mayor Poulson in July 1953.19 Squatters, Cows, Goats, Chickens . . . and a Baseball Stadium With Poulson’s election, plans for the former public housing sites of Rose Hill Courts Extension and Chavez Ravine were not long in forthcoming. In October 1953, the mayor outlined a city park complex with a major league baseball stadium, a zoo, and an eighteen-hole golf course in Chavez Ravine. “These sites are big enough for three or four golf courses,” enthused Councilman John Holland, “which the city needs badly.” Yet a modicum of dissent was present: “A golf course is a poor substitute for public housing that had been planned for low income families,” declared Councilman Ed Roybal when Poulson urged the council to exercise its option to purchase the erstwhile public housing sites from the CHA.20 Meanwhile, the seeds of what would be the most visible conXict in the formation of modern Los Angeles were being cultivated. Since 1923, the family of Manuel Aréchiga had lived in Chavez Ravine, camping

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in tents while they built their home there. In 1951, the CHA condemned their property for the Elysian Park Heights project. The CHA offered the Aréchigas $11,500 for their two houses and three lots, though a private appraiser set the value at $17,000. In February 1953, the Los Angeles County Superior Court reduced the award to $10,050, which would await the Aréchigas in the county clerk’s ofWce. After the cancellation of Elysian Park Heights in July 1953, Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga appealed their condemnation to superior court on September 30, asking the CHA to set aside or enjoin enforcement of the condemnation. They claimed neither fraud, collusion, nor bad faith on the part of the CHA; rather, they argued that the public purpose for which their property had been condemned, the Elysian Park Heights public housing project, no longer existed. “With their homes now surrounded by a scene as desolate as a war-torn battleWeld,” wrote the Examiner in October 1953, “a plucky family group waged a holding action against the powerful City Housing Authority.”21 On May 12, 1954, the City Council’s Veterans Affairs and Public Housing Committee and the Finance Committee recommended that the city exercise its option to purchase the erstwhile public housing sites and permitted the Bureau of Right of Way and Land to make arrangements to do so. Passed by the council on June 29, 1955, and approved by Mayor Poulson on July 1, Ordinance 105,801 authorized the acquisition. The 185-acre Chavez Ravine site was sold to the City of Los Angeles for $1.3 million—about $4.5 million less than what the federal government had invested in site development—with the provision that the land be used “for public purposes only.”22 Many saw a major league baseball franchise both as an economic stimulus and as a prestigious status symbol for modern Los Angeles. City elites viewed major league baseball as a communal glue that would bind together the political diversity of race and class that threatened the modern city. County Supervisor John Anson Ford bemoaned that the city’s sports fans “suffered from an inferiority complex because their city, the third largest in the nation, did not posses a major ball club.” A major league baseball franchise would, in short, catalyze the local economy, provide a symbol to derail the anarchic centrifugalism of modernism and, in the process, cure the Freudian franchise-envy of the despondent citizenry.23 In the fall of 1956, following a suggestion of the Board of Supervisors that Los Angeles needed a franchise, County Supervisor (and former councilman) Kenneth Hahn Xew to New York to scout the

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possibilities of obtaining one. He began negotiating with the Washington Senators, but while attending a game of the World Series, he received a communiqué from Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, telling him not to sign with the Senators because O’Malley wished to move the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Mayor Poulson also approached O’Malley during the 1956 World Series with the intent of enticing the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Likewise, City Councilwoman Rosalind Wiener had a “hunch” that O’Malley was casting about for a new home and was actively and successfully priming the political machinery to lure the Dodgers to Los Angeles. O’Malley was amenable to the idea of relocating the Dodgers because New York City Park Commissioner Robert Moses had denied him what O’Malley considered an adequate site on which to construct a new stadium in Brooklyn. However, within the goal of creating a modern Los Angeles, “O’Malley needed us much less than we needed him,” Poulson later stated.24 In March 1957, a Los Angeles City-County delegation met with O’Malley at the Dodger Spring Training Camp in Vero Beach, Florida, in order to negotiate a new Dodger Stadium. There, reminisced Poulson, “One of our ofWcials [County Supervisor Hahn] promised O’Malley the moon, and Walter asked for more.” Poulson dismissed Chavez Ravine as an area “inhabited by squatters and a handful of small home owners whose goats, cows and chickens roamed about” and suggested it as a potential stadium site. On May 2, Hahn arranged a helicopter tour for O’Malley in order to show him a number of possible locations for a new stadium. “When O’Malley saw Chavez Ravine,” Hahn later wrote, “his mind was made up.” When they landed, Hahn completely overstepped his authority as a public ofWcial and told O’Malley: “You can have it!”25 Initially, the city offered O’Malley only the 185-acre Chavez Ravine site formerly owned by the CHA plus $2 million for its clearance. In September 1957, the City Council sweetened the deal in order to ward off any wanderlust that might affect O’Malley. The council added 115 acres of land in Chavez Ravine, purchased by the city at a price not to exceed $7,000 per acre, and $2.7 million from the state gas fund to build access roads. O’Malley was, in exchange, to give the city the 9.8-acre Wrigley Field (the Dodger-owned stadium where the Angels played) and a (never constructed) 40-acre community recreation center at the stadium site in Chavez Ravine. On October 7, the City Council voted 10–4 to approve the Dodger contract. “If that wasn’t a ‘sweetheart deal,’” stated former councilman Roybal in a 1996 interview, “I don’t know what is.”26

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“Modern Rome’s Coliseum Crucifixium” “It was then that the revolution began,” Poulson later recounted. “Political enemies of mine, O’Malley haters, baseball haters, crackpots, intelligent people feeling the city was being slickered, and groups with selWsh motives seemed to emerge from the alcoves all at once.” Under the slogan of “Save Chavez Ravine for the People,” the opponents of the stadium initiated a campaign utilizing lawsuits, letter writing, and pressure on elected ofWcials. With the heralded arrival of the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine, “several thousand people evicted from the area will not share in the predicted general enthusiasm,” observed Frontier magazine. “They are the people who were promised, in writing, Wrst choice on new low-rent houses once planned for the site.”27 A citywide voter referendum to approve the Dodger contract (Proposition B) was held in June 1958. The public relations Wrm Baus and Ross handled the pro-Dodger side of the campaign. William Ross saw the referendum as a vengeance campaign against Poulson, supported by liberal Democrats who “were still upset over that public housing business.” “The dissenters [public housing proponents],” claimed Herbert Baus, “never did swallow this Chavez Ravine matter gracefully.” The electorate narrowly upheld the proposed stadium by 351,683 votes to 325,898, and carried only nine of the Wfteen council districts.28 Julius Ruben and Louis Kirschbaum Wled separate taxpayer suits on September 23, 1957, and April 19, 1958, respectively, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Ruben and Kirschbaum sought to prevent the execution of the Dodger agreement because it was highly debatable whether a private stadium could be considered for “public purposes only.” The two cases were tried simultaneously by Judge Arnold Praeger, who, on July 14, 1958, granted an injunction against the City Council from proceeding with the Dodger contract. The court wrote that a “City Council has no right or power to give a private organization carte blanche with respect to the spending of public money.” The city then Wled with the California Supreme Court to obtain a writ to restrain the superior court’s injunction. In a unanimous decision, a writ was issued in January 1959. The judgment given to Ruben and Kirschbaum by the superior court was reversed by the California Supreme Court on April 21, 1959: “The general restrictions as to public purpose, if not mere surplusage, was intended to apply only while the city retained the land.”29 The Aréchigas’ complaint against the CHA’s condemnation order had, in the meantime, moved into the California State Court of Appeal with the City of Los Angeles, now the current title holder, listed as a

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co-respondent. The judgment of the lower court, that the Aréchigas were not entitled to a return of their property because of abandoned public use, was afWrmed in April 1958. A writ of possession of the Aréchiga property had been issued to the CHA in July 1953 but had then been stayed by the superior court in October due to the ongoing legal appeals. In May 1957, the City of Los Angeles, as the successor to the CHA’s title, sought to obtain a writ of possession, which it did following the 1958 decision of Housing Authority v. Lopez. Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga were, on March 10, 1959, given notice to vacate by April 9 or be removed by the sheriff. On May 6, Manuel Aréchiga wrote to the Mirror-News and explained his position: “I haven’t anything against the Dodgers but if they want my land let them pay a reasonable price for it, not take it away.”30 On May 8, 1959, several of the remaining households—those of the Aréchigas, Mrs. Alice Martin, and Mrs. Sally Ramirez—were forcibly evicted. Two squads of sheriff’s deputies surrounded the Aréchiga property, which was, according to the Times, “their primary target.” On their approach, the Aréchigas—four adults and three children—barricaded themselves in their home. In response, the deputies promptly broke in the doors. Aurora Vargas, a daughter of the Aréchigas and a war widow, kicked three sheriff’s deputies who were forcibly dislodging her. Mrs. Avrana Aréchiga threw stones at the deputies who were removing the family belongings. Mrs. Victoria Angustain, also an Aréchiga daughter, struggled with the law enforcement ofWcers. “Screeching deWance at the deputies,” Miss Glen Walters, a former neighbor of the Aréchigas, was handcuffed and taken to a squad car. All the while, outside the house, the children wailed hysterically, dogs barked furiously, and chickens squawked.31 Less than ten minutes later, two city bulldozers arrived to level the homes. The family then set up a tent in a nearby vacant lot and refused to move. Victoria Angustain told La Opinión that her family had to remain in the street because they had nowhere to go. In returning the writ of possession, Sheriff Peter Pitchess swore, without irony, that he had placed the city “in quiet and peaceful possession of the lands and premises” described in the writ. It was “the hottest battle in California since the war with Mexico,” Poulson wrote later.32 After television coverage of the evictions, letters to the City Council were sympathetic to the Aréchigas. “If I hadn’t seen it,” Clare Bernarding wrote to the council, “I wouldn’t have believed it, that it could

Figure 17. The eviction of the Aréchigas at Chavez Ravine, May 8, 1959. (USC Regional History Center)

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happen in America. . . . I bow my head in shame. May the Dodgers never have success on the site of these peoples sorrow.” “If the ‘Great American Sport’ is the cause of this un-American treatment,” stated Mrs. R. D. Kechler to the “powers-that-be” at City Hall, “I’ll have none of it!” Even though the Aréchigas were amply forewarned of the impending eviction, asked Mrs. Tim Kission, “did they have to be remove[d] like animals?” Frances Middleton referred to the evictions as “the disgrace of Los Angeles.” She had little sympathy for “the guilty ones who pushed the old people around”: “I hope God strikes them down.” The Save Chavez Ravine for the People Committee wrote an open letter to Mayor Poulson: “You take from the poor and give to the rich. Los Angeles is getting to be a hated city.”33 Television coverage was broadcast nationwide. “It made my blood boil to see this on T.V.,” a resident of Freehold, New Jersey, wrote to Councilman John Holland. “This to me is Hitlerism. . . . I can’t forget what [the Dodgers] have done to these fellow Americans.” After viewing the evictions on NBC News, William R. Reed wrote to the council from Paducah, Kentucky, that though he and his family had been considering relocating to California, “I wouldn’t set foot in a state that would permit such things to occur. . . . you people seem to think that a baseball stadium is the most important thing in the world . . . [but] you have set this country and all we stand for back many years.” “By God,” wrote George Nelson, a professional soldier from Kileen, Texas, “you’d have to use riXes to inXict that type of degradation on me and my family.” Nelson’s family had been thinking of moving to Southern California upon his retirement, but now, he wrote, “you couldn’t give me California and your Gestapo Sheriff’s Department.”34 The strong-arm evictions were seen by many as a source of unAmerican propaganda. E. M. Cecer wrote to Roybal that “this affair has damaged every body in [the] U.S.A. . . . real anti-American propaganda deluxe & sadly true.” “What beautiful propaganda . . . for the Russians,” wrote Lee Hennessy from San Antonio, Texas; “with Chavez Ravine, they can show our own police ofWcers dragging an old woman and a child from their home.” “Please,” former newscaster Charles M. Stahl sent a telegram to the City Council, “no more fodder for the communist propaganda machine.” “This whole deal from beginning to end was handled just the way they do things in Russia,” wrote an anonymous resident to the council. “We brag about justice in the United States—Bah.”35

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On May 11, the council opened hearings on the evictions. Councilwoman Rosalind Wiener Wyman, a zealous and outspoken partisan of the Dodgers, was denounced as a “black-hearted woman” and was the recipient, she revealed, of numerous threatening phone calls. “Policemen had to come and protect me around my seat,” Wyman recalled, “the hostility became so strong. There was talk about having protection of my house; it had gotten so far out of hand.” The family members of the Aréchigas reiterated that all they desired was a fair replacement price for their property—$17,500 instead of the $10,050 that had been Wxed by the court—and $150 a month until restitution was made to compensate them for the loss of the use of their homes.36 City Attorney Roger Arnebergh clariWed the city’s legal position by pointing out that the Aréchigas’ 1951 property valuation was performed by the CHA, a state agency, and upheld by the courts. The validity of the 1955 purchase of the Elysian Park Heights public housing project site by the city was likewise upheld by the courts. Every legal requirement had been observed and thus the evictions were a result of due process. This case was particularly dangerous and volatile according to Arnebergh: Were the people of America, like the Aréchigas, to “refuse to comply with court orders, our entire constitutional form of government will fall and anarchy will result.”37 Howard Holtzendorff, executive director of the CHA, afWrmed that the Aréchigas had been offered three apartments in Ramona Gardens, which the family had refused because they needed a place to maintain their Xock of 150 chickens. Mayor Poulson, speaking at a civic luncheon in Santa Barbara, returned to Los Angeles in record driving time in order to attend the session. While preparing a written statement in his ofWce that afternoon, the mayor was threatened with a subpoena to appear immediately before the council. Poulson explained that “we are inviting anarchy” by the nonenforcement of court-ordered evictions. The audience of over three hundred persons loudly booed the mayor as he exited council chambers.38 According to Councilwoman Wyman, the council received an unsigned postcard claiming that the Aréchigas owned a number of properties. Wyman asked a reporter who worked for the Mirror-News to check it out. As a result, on May 13 the paper broke the story that members of the Aréchigas’ extended family were the owners of seven homes (the Times reported eleven) that were rented and occupied by other parties. The other properties owned by the family were not the

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issue, explained Victoria Angustain to La Opinión. “Lo que importa es nuestro derecho a esta propiedad: estamos determinados a luchar por conservarla” (What is important is our right to this property: We are determined to struggle to keep it).39 The revelation that the Aréchiga family were indeed property owners did not alter the historical record of the evictions or of the sweetheart deal in Chavez Ravine. “There is not the remotest relationship,” C. R. Moody wrote to the Mirror-News, between the ownership of Aréchiga property “and the brutal eviction.” “I don’t care if these people own half of Los Angeles,” declared Councilman Karl Rundberg to the Times. “The way their private property was conWscated through the guise of public use only to be turned over to a private corporation is a miscarriage of justice. It is also a Xagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States.” “So what that [it] is now shown that the Arechigas are not destitute?” asked Ed Novak of the council. “They were thrown and carried out like dogs. Is it a crime now to have made and saved a little money? . . . They were not given millions like the city gave to Walter O’Malley.” The properties in question, moreover, were owned by the adult children of the Aréchigas and, as Councilman Roybal wrote, “The fact that the family and in-laws of the elder Arechigas have homes is not pertinent. Certainly the homes of my relatives do not belong to me.” It is not a crime to have property, he told La Opinión, and it did not justify in any way “el trato inhumano” (the inhumane treatment) they received.40 Indignant and self-righteous, Mayor Poulson railed against the “mob hysteria” of the Aréchiga case. “The Arechiga family is a victim of its own eagerness to extract from the taxpayer more than it was granted by a valid court decision.” Holtzendorff withdrew the CHA’s offer of housing to the Aréchigas because, as property owners, they were ineligible for publicly assisted housing. Sensationalist TV coverage of the eviction was, claimed the Times, “the answer to a demagogue’s prayer.” The press, on the other hand, revealed “facts” to the public, namely, the Aréchigas’ property holdings.41 Ten days after their eviction, Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga, following a brief conference with Councilman Roybal, struck their tent and went to the house of a daughter in Santa Fe Springs. Quitting the condemned property, afWrmed Roybal, would not affect the family’s legal claims. “If it was for public housing and not for private use, we wouldn’t mind leaving,” Victoria Angustain told the Mirror-News. Avrana Aréchiga told La Opinión in an ill-humored tone that she

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owned two other properties that had never been mentioned: “Dos lotes en el cemetario de El Calvario. Para mí y para mi marido.” (Two lots in Calvary cemetery. For me and my husband.) In August, the Aréchigas’ claim for damages was denied by the city.42 Represented by attorney Phill Silver, the Aréchigas had initiated a complaint against the CHA in Los Angeles County Superior Court on May 21, 1959, seeking to set aside the judgment of eminent domain given to the City of Los Angeles. At the time of the condemnation of the Aréchiga property in February 1953, according to the complaint, the CHA was already aware that Elysian Park Heights would not be built. The concealment of such information threatened the validity of the transfer of the property to the city in 1955. Silver argued that the previous court decisions had been tainted by the suppression of material facts—what amounted to extrinsic fraud—on the part of the representatives of the CHA. Noting that the defendants had demurred on these charges, the court ruled on June 24 that the plaintiffs take nothing from their legal action. The Aréchigas then petitioned the California State Court of Appeal for a hearing; in that hearing, on August 19, 1960, the court did not recognize the legitimacy of Silver’s arguments and afWrmed the validity of the city’s writ of possession. The Aréchigas Wnally accepted the condemnation award of $10,050 following a 1962 appeals court ruling that they could not collect interest on the 1953 offer.43 Meanwhile, the transformation of Chavez Ravine into a showcase of modern Los Angeles continued. “They’re breaking ground today for a structure of the greatest importance in the future of Los Angeles,” editorialized the Herald and Express on September 17, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Julius Ruben’s appeal, the Wnal legal obstacle in the road to modernism, on October 19. “Those who want to admire its architectural magniWcence,” editorialized the Times on the occasion of the ballpark’s opening in April 1962, “will go out to Chavez Ravine to gape at the new baseball stadium.” Chavez Ravine was “an excellent example of urban renewal and development. . . . It is a show place built on an ancient enclave of dinginess which, 10 years ago, seemed to have no future except as an institutionalized slum of low-rent public housing.”44 A major milestone in the formation of modern Los Angeles, the battle of Chavez Ravine was very signiWcant for the direction of subsequent urban politics. The militancy of the Chavez Ravine residents and their willingness to take a stand against the proverbial city hall

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has been passed down to provide inspiration and motivation for succeeding activists. The residents of Chavez Ravine, Wnding they had little or no inXuence on formal party politics after the downfall of the Left’s agenda of social democratic reform, discarded due process in favor of direct action. This was a characteristic of the “movement politics” that would develop in the 1960s. Presaging the violence of the following decade, a Los Angeles resident wrote to Roybal of the Chavez Ravine evictions: “Fortunately, no deputy Sheriff had his head blown off by a shotgun—this time.”45 Modernism and Party Politics By the late 1950s, the Democratic Party was divided between the populist aspirations of the fragmenting Roosevelt coalition on the one hand and a pro-growth coalition of organized labor, business, and government on the other. Whereas the former, led by the left-liberal popular front, sought to create a better world by means of social democratic reform, the latter united “conservatives interested in proWts with liberals committed to equality” within the expanding economy of the (corporate) modern city. Activated by the watchword of “progress,” the pro-growth coalition annihilated obsolete civic fabric in favor of a modern urban geography. The redevelopment of Chavez Ravine highlighted this factional divide within the Los Angeles Democratic constituency.46 Following the transfer of Chavez Ravine to the Dodgers, many Democratic voters tried to determine which faction their party represented. Wilma Merrill wrote to pro-Dodger county supervisor Kenneth Hahn, a Democrat, in 1957: “You have now crawled on the wrong ‘band wagon’ with big Business rather than representing the people who elected you and who have put their trust and faith in you.” Two months later she wrote to Roybal: “I am a Demo. and a good one who votes. I made a couple of mistakes and voted for K. Hahn and [Councilman Leonard] Timberlake for which I am ashamed but will not vote for them next time. I was a Dodger fan, but [Dodger owner] O’Malley . . . left [a] bad taste in my mouth and we don’t want to give them one acre now.”47 Such sentiments were more acutely expressed in the wake of the Aréchiga eviction. Democrat Joseph Babando eloquently described the motivations of the pro-growth adherents of modernism with the consequences for party politics: “They are the people who do not know the meaning of tradition, or respect for human association. A city to

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them is merely an arena for exploitation. . . . They have driven the best men out of public ofWce and created an atmosphere in which nothing but predatory mediocrity can survive.” “If such is progress,” wrote a deliberately unsigned Angeleno to the City Council in regard to the evictions at Chavez Ravine, “may God help this whole community.”48 While the voters quoted above bemoaned the demise of the party’s legacy, others saw an alternate role for the Democrats. Modernism and progress, not the remnants of New Deal populism, deWned the new party. Ernest Evans, a Democrat from the suburban San Fernando Valley, criticized Roybal for his opposition to the stadium in Chavez Ravine: “How you, a Democrat, can line up with these people is beyond me. . . . The great overall beneWt to Los Angeles cannot be estimated, and anyone who is against the Dodger agreement belongs to some hick town and not this modern marvel, Los Angeles.”49 Pro-growth advocates attacked the councilmen who sympathized with the Aréchigas—be they liberal Democrats like Ed Roybal or conservative Republicans like John Holland—as political speed bumps on the road to modernism. H. A. Garza, a resident of Boyle Heights, wrote to Roybal concerning his advocacy of the Aréchigas: “What a Jerk you turned out to be, defending people who like to make a sucker out of you. . . . This will teach you not to stand in the way of progress, and seek cheap publicity which will lose you nothing but votes. Hope you get out of public ofWce and stay out.” “You’re sick sick sick!!” wrote Mrs. Arthur Stein to Holland. “How the hell did you ever get re-elected? You belong in a place where you can think man, think. (Re: Chavez Ravine) You’d better get on the winning side before it’s too late!” “What a demagogue you are,” Paul S. Goen chastised Holland, advocating the councilman’s recall. “Your crocodile tears in the City Council Chamber over those lawless squatters in Chavez Ravine are a disgrace . . . to the city.” Mrs. L. Brown scrawled similar postcards to both Roybal and Holland asking “How much money did those Red Mexicans give you? . . . If you ever attend a base ball game—I hope that you are hit in the head with a bat.”50 Though the central element of the left-liberal popular front and the leading proponent of public housing until its 1953 defeat, organized labor subsequently embraced the pro-growth dictates and modernism of the new Democrats. In 1957, the Times congratulated “union labor groups” for assisting Mayor Poulson in creating “a working urban renewal program.” The Chavez Ravine project revealed a split in the ranks of organized labor roughly parallel to that of the general Democratic

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constituency. Describing Chavez Ravine as a “waste land,” J. J. Christian, the secretary of the Los Angeles Building Trades Council, chastised the city in 1957 for being “very slow in taking steps for needed improvements” to build Dodger Stadium. He encouraged the city in “bringing this type of entertainment [baseball], which is clean and wholesome.” However, some union locals, particularly Local 123 of the Furniture Workers, Upholsterers, and Wood Workers Union, condemned the evictions at Chavez Ravine.51 The Chavez Ravine events catalyzed a political militancy directed against Poulson and the downtown interests that controlled urban redevelopment in Los Angeles. “I would like to see our infamous Mayor Poulson tied to the front of a dozer,” Louis J. Cyado informed Councilman Holland. “This last action [the Aréchiga eviction] leaves an unforgettable picture in my mind that will govern my action in any future election,” wrote Ken Liebhardt to Holland. “Poulson should put [Councilwoman] Wyman in the baggage compartment of his Rambler and get out of California.” Alex Bradford, living in Goleta, wrote to his (ex-?) friend Leslie Claypool, who was at that time handling public relations for Poulson: But Poulson is just too contemptible for words. On my books he is the sorriest, slimiest apology for a human being that ever swindled the public. . . . He is even worse than his boss, Chandler [publisher of the Times]. . . . the Chavez Ravine deal is just part of a long record of skulduggery by Poulson, Chandler and their accomplices. Even before he was elected to ofWce (on the fat cat’s slush fund) Poulson began conniving and scheming to gyp the people on the housing deal. How damn contemptible can a person get? . . . I am planning to move back home to Los Angeles, and when I do I aim to Wght Poulson with everything I’ve got. All I’ve got to think about is Chavez Ravine and I get mad enough to Wght the way I did overseas in all theaters of war.52

Alternatively, many pro-growth advocates questioned Poulson’s ability to make the hard-nosed decisions required to forge the modern city. “Los Angeles . . . must be a great city,” wrote Edmund McKanna to Holland, denouncing the “emotionalism” of the Chavez Ravine evictions. “It requires the highest form of leadership to realize its awesome potential. . . . [Poulson] is a pleasant man who has been placed in a job beyond his capabilities.”53 Repudiating such accusations of pleasantness, Poulson responded

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to the critics of growth and of the modern city: “If you are not prepared to be part of this greatness, if you want Los Angeles to revert to pueblo status . . . then my best advice to you is to prepare to settle elsewhere.” He saw his opponents who had been mobilizing against the realization of modern Los Angeles, particularly around the events of Chavez Ravine and Bunker Hill, as “professional obstructionists.” This group “would always want to place itself in opposition to every progressive step a community makes.” Poulson’s pro-growth advocacy, however, was seen as congruent with downtown interests and was thus a focus of opposition from both suburban-oriented pro-growth Democrats and the fragments of the Roosevelt coalition.54 Sam Yorty and the “Downtown Machine” Such disgruntlement was a foundation of Sam Yorty’s mayoral campaign against Poulson in the 1961 municipal elections. Yorty had begun his political career in 1936 as a left-wing Democrat in the California Assembly. Political scientists John Bollens and Grant Geyer characterized him as “an ultraliberal who wanted to keep a moderate appearance.” Championed by liberals and the Left as the candidate to oppose Frank Shaw in the 1938 Los Angeles mayoral recall, Yorty’s supporters ultimately rejected him in favor of Fletcher Bowron. An enraged Yorty blamed his fall from grace on a Communist plot. He saw his failed bid for election as Twelfth District councilman the following spring as due to the liability of his ultraliberal reputation. Yorty reoriented his political direction 180 degrees, becoming the chairman of the state’s Xedgling CUAC (popularly known as the “little Dies” committee) in 1940.55 Yorty successfully ran for Congress in 1950, giving up his seat in 1954 to pursue an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. In a 1956 dispute over the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, Yorty decried the California Democratic Council (CDC) as “wired, stacked, rigged, and packed,” subsequently charging that the CDC had been taken over by the extreme Left. As a Democrat, he had refused to support the party’s 1960 presidential candidate, claiming that John Kennedy was too dependent on his family’s wealth, beholden to both big-city machines and big-labor leaders, and a favorite of Communists within the CDC. Since he had thoroughly alienated the Democratic Party leadership, Yorty’s political future lay in seeking a nonpartisan ofWce.56 In 1961 Yorty ran as a Democrat in the nonpartisan Los Angeles mayoral race. He was able to garner the support of many suburban

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pro-growth Democrats, who were wary of a downtown-controlled progrowth coalition, as well as of the splintered Roosevelt coalition, who were dissatisWed with the direction of city redevelopment policy. Though they had been amiable and like-minded congressional colleagues, Yorty recalled in his oral history that Poulson was not a good mayor and was “just a stooge for the Los Angeles Times.” In his campaign, Yorty vigorously assailed the political motivations of the “downtown machine” of the Los Angeles economic elite. In response to questioning by “the vicious, unprincipled mercenaries running Poulson’s campaign for the City Hall machine” (particularly the Times) of his ultraliberal record in the Assembly, Yorty claimed that the “machine is trying to smear me with a red brush just as they did Judge Fletcher Bowron eight years ago.”57 Indeed, downtown was solidly lined up behind Mayor Poulson, who had charted a course for a modern Los Angeles. Poulson had handily won reelection in 1957, before the events at Chavez Ravine had come to a head. As Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt point out, Poulson “acted on business needs and goals: Bunker Hill was undergoing redevelopment, and the Dodgers baseball team had come to Chavez Ravine. The downtown businessmen, content with their mayor, were determined to hold on to their power.” The upper echelons of both city Democrats and the AFL-CIO also supported Poulson’s candidacy. “Under his administration,” the Los Angeles Democrat praised Poulson, “the Democratic Party has thrived in Los Angeles. Democrats have participated actively in our City Government and all have shared in the prosperity and progress of our city.”58 On May 31, with a very light voter turnout, Yorty was elected mayor of Los Angeles. With 51.5 percent of the vote (24.2 percent of the registered voters), Yorty narrowly carried every district with the exception of afXuent West Los Angeles. Rank-and-Wle Democrats as well as the African American and Mexican American electorate cast their votes for Yorty. Poulson later attributed his defeat to his aggressive efforts to bring the Dodgers to Chavez Ravine, which, he claimed, “doubtlessly cost me the last election.” “My opponent, Samuel Yorty, picked up a good-sized following in my baseball enemies,” Poulson complained. “When the city went to the polls, the vote was even closer than the baseball referendum.” “There’s nothing left but hope,” a dejected Times editorialized on June 2. “Whatever he [Yorty] may be, the colors he carries are the mark of a political privateer.” According to the paper, Yorty’s victory was a very real threat to civic progress, and the result would be the political

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withdrawal of a central component of the pro-growth coalition: “The marching you hear is the retreat of what Mr. Yorty calls ‘this vicious downtown clique that has long dominated City Hall.’”59 The Left also shared the antipathy that downtown felt toward Yorty. “Widespread discontent with the administration of Norris Poulson . . . contributed largely to [the candidacy of Yorty],” the People’s World had editorialized in April. The paper condemned “the failure of the liberal forces, who express themselves through the Democratic party, to put forward a recognized spokesman. . . . They helped to create a political vacuum made to order for a demagogue to pin the Democratic label on himself and grab the nomination.” Faced with choosing between the modernism of Poulson and the right-wing populism of Yorty, “how come the voters wound up with such grim alternatives?” queried the Communist weekly in June. “It is not that the voters picked the ‘worst’ alternative, but that they were offered no meaningful alternative.” Asserted an accompanying editorial: “It was an election by default.” “Simply stated,” wrote B. B. of Los Angeles to the People’s World in July, “the . . . results proved that a majority of voters had ‘had it’ with Poulson,” citing the brouhaha surrounding Chavez Ravine as one of the most prominent sources of discontent.60 In temporarily bringing together the interests of a faction of the pro-growth Democrats and many of the Roosevelt coalition to assure his electoral victory, Yorty appeared as a political entrepreneur (or political opportunist) extraordinaire. “Sam appealed to the hopes of the people,” according to Bollens and Geyer, “for better, more responsive government, for an end to control by the ‘downtown machine.’” Quickly repositioning himself, in what Bollens and Geyer term “the most remarkable juggling act [that] Yorty performed,” the new mayor rallied his former opponents to his side. For example, he offered Times publisher Norman Chandler the chairmanship of the CRA! “Within a matter of months,” wrote Gottlieb and Wolt, “the champion of the little guy had made his peace with downtown.” Ostracized from participation in the formal politics of modern Los Angeles, the discontented electorate would, as the decade advanced, create new forms of political expression.61 Conclusion The defeat of the city’s public housing program signaled the decline of the Left and of social democratic reform in Los Angeles. The administration of Norris Poulson, embodying a vision of corporate modern

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Los Angeles, postulated civic progress as the city’s political goal. Similarly, local Democrats shifted their orientation from the populism of the left-liberal popular front toward the modernism of the pro-growth coalition. The transformation of Chavez Ravine—from public housing site to Dodger Stadium—was the result of a working partnership between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, in realizing modern Los Angeles. Following the public housing war of the early 1950s, the Left in Los Angeles was voiceless. By 1961, the opportunism employed by Yorty had harnessed the electoral discontent of those disaffected by modernism, only to return formal politics to the pro-growth coalition and their corresponding vision of the modern city. Social democratic reform in opposition to corporate modernism was excluded from municipal politics in Los Angeles. New popular political tactics—the nascent form of which could be seen in the resistance to the evictions at Chavez Ravine—would be developed by those not a part of “this modern marvel.”

CONCLUSION

“Thus the Sixties Reap the Folly of the Fifties”

ith the Red Scare of the 1950s, the social democratic reforms espoused by the Left came to a close. The defeat of public housing in Los Angeles was the culmination of a nationwide assault on that program. With the fragmentation of the Left, the making of a better world by means of the public housing projects—the socially planned communities of a modern city—seemed to be a failed political possibility. Corporate modernism, shaped by urban renewal, now deWned modern Los Angeles. While social democratic reform, as a political form, was comatose, the social motivation to make a better world was far from lifeless. Popular political expression as to the direction of modernism, no longer articulated by the Left’s strategy of social democratic reform, appeared in movement form.

W

Los Angeles and the National Public Housing Program Between the Housing Act of 1949 and the end of 1952 there were a series of referenda that allowed voters to reject the siting or scheduling of public housing projects previously approved by their respective local governments. The national lobbying efforts of real estate interests Wnancially and organizationally empowered these referenda. These attacks on public housing were well coordinated, with information, tactics, and issues being shared, compared, and evaluated between the program’s national and local opponents as well as between municipal battleWelds. The top two issues, which appeared repeatedly at both 187

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national and local levels in the anti–public housing struggles, were charges that public housing was socialist or Communist.1 “In their unrelenting Wght against public housing,” wrote Harry Conn in a 1951 New Republic, “real-estate operators are shifting much of their attention from Washington and putting their show on the road.” By the end of 1952, the real estate lobby had emerged victorious in forty out of sixty local referenda in opposition to local public housing programs. These encounters occurred in small and medium-sized cities from Seattle, Washington, to Miami, Florida. Los Angeles was by far the largest city in which the referenda battles took place. “The rejection of public housing by the Los Angeles electorate,” noted Leonard Freedman of Proposition B in 1952, “was the climax of a series of referendum defeats beginning in 1949.”2 Orchestrated anti–public housing attacks, not part of the above referenda battles, also appeared in major cities across the nation during the Cold War. Though nowhere as extensive or vicious as in Los Angeles, the Red Scare was a major part of the assault against local public housing programs. Frequently intertwined with issues of race, the Red Scare would often mark the fragmentation of indigenous leftist, liberal, and labor participation in and support for the public housing program. This dissolution left public housing without the social concerns or potential of social democratic reform that had characterized its former halcyon days. For example, the Detroit Housing Commission, in anticipation of the 1949 Housing Act, proposed twelve public housing sites as part of a comprehensive redevelopment project of the primarily black inner city. Many community groups, supported by the local press, mobilized in opposition to this plan. “Public housing projects,” historian Thomas Sugrue wrote, were portrayed as “part of the conspiratorial effort of well-placed communists and communist sympathizers in the government to destroy traditional American values through a carefully calculated policy of racial and class struggle.” The public housing controversy reached a climax in the 1949 mayoral election, which pitted conservative real estate investor Albert Cobo against the New Deal liberalism of George Edwards. Cobo’s victory assured the demise of Detroit’s public housing program as the new mayor denied approval to the controversial project sites. The defeat of Edwards, a one-time UAW activist and former public housing administrator, dashed the hopes for a laborliberal municipal government and “marked the beginning of a retreat of the UAW from labor politics in the city.”3

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Drayton Bryant, the director of public relations for the Philadelphia Housing Authority, was accused in 1952 by the Philadelphia Daily News of having an afWnity for socialism because he advocated cooperative homeownership and because he had once lectured on “important neighborhood factors in home ownership” at the University of Southern California’s People’s Education Center. A former CHA public housing manager and employee (1940–48), Bryant had, by moving to Philadelphia, avoided the McCarthyism in Los Angeles only to have the Red Scare pursue him to the Philadelphia Housing Authority. In line with John Bauman’s thinking, this episode was one of the elements that marked a watershed between the communitarian vision of public housing in Philadelphia and its development as “the unloved step-child of urban renewal.” Within the next two decades, public housing would represent “a gigantic, publicly supported real estate bureaucracy, a human warehousing agency whose clients were very-low-paid workers or public dependents.”4 Chicago experienced a siting controversy during the early 1950s when 15,000 public housing units were scheduled to be built on vacant land on the outskirts of the city to rehouse African Americans. This undertaking was vociferously opposed by the white, ethnic working class and their aldermen, whose attacks on the Chicago Housing Authority, orchestrated by the press, had all the hallmarks of the Red Scare. The Chicago press, according to Arnold Hirsch, proclaimed that the Chicago Housing Authority was “Wlled with Reds” and Communist sympathizers and called for a “complete investigation of the [Chicago Housing Authority] by Senator McCarthy’s group.” Civil rights organizations in support of nondiscriminatory housing were on the defensive because of allegations of subversive afWliations or activities. Elizabeth Wood, the executive secretary of Chicago’s housing authority and a staunch integrationist, was described as a “pinkee” and as having a “sympathy for Socialism” and was forced to resign in 1954. “The Wring of Elizabeth Wood,” said Devereux Bowly Jr., “not only signaled the change in power of [the Chicago Housing Authority] from liberals to conservatives, but the end of an almost twenty-year period where public housing was viewed as a vehicle of social change.”5 The Gwinn Amendment, the 1952 federal legislation that prohibited public housing occupancy by the members of organizations listed as subversive by the attorney general, eroded the political and social power of public housing tenants. It severed the trust and solidarity that had existed between tenants and their local housing authorities, while

190

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reasserting the paternalism of public housing managers. The threat of the loyalty oaths to identify publicly housed subversives fostered factional disputes between the Left and the liberals. In the Codornices project near Berkeley, California, the Gwinn Amendment disrupted and destroyed the unity between the NAACP and the Communist Party, reXecting “the impact of McCarthyism in heightening tensions between progressives. Under these conditions,” wrote historian Marilynn Johnson, “broad-based political action around public housing was difWcult, if not impossible.”6 Several legal actions throughout the nation, assisted by the ACLU, Wgured prominently in the Gwinn Amendment’s eventual downfall. In a case involving the Chicago Housing Authority, the Illinois Supreme Court declared the Gwinn Amendment unconstitutional in November 1954, as did the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its decision regarding the Milwaukee Housing Authority in June 1955. The suit of tenant John Rudder and the National Capital Housing Authority worked its way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., in July 1955. The nation’s highest court to rule on the Gwinn Amendment found that its requirements were arbitrary and a violation of due process.7 On November 7, 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Gwinn Amendment decision. This action set off a “new furor of speculation on the law’s constitutionality” within the PHA. That organization’s assistant general counsel issued an interpretation that the Gwinn Amendment was still the law of the land, except in Wisconsin. In December 1955, the New Jersey Supreme Court and New York’s appellate division, in decisions involving the Newark Housing Authority and the New York City Housing Authority, respectively, declared the ineffectiveness of the Gwinn Amendment. The conclusion of this string of legal defeats came when the CHA in Los Angeles appealed Cordova v. Housing Authority to the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 27, 1956, the Court refused to hear the case and thus allowed the lower-court ruling to stand. On July 30, the Public Housing Administration issued a directive that it would no longer enforce loyalty oath provisions. The Department of Justice announced likewise on August 2. The Gwinn Amendment, pronounced the Journal of Housing, “is dead.”8 Though the Gwinn Amendment might have been dead and thereafter inconsequential, the public housing program already appeared to be mortally wounded. After its 1953 defeat in Los Angeles, public

Conclusion

191

housing construction on the national level fell drastically. The expense of the Korean War and Republican control of the White House are oftcited inXuences, but, as Leonard Freedman notes, “the local controversies were a signiWcant, if not indispensable, factor in changing the tide of opinion in Congress against public housing.” The 1954 Housing Act cut federal public housing starts to 35,000 units per year, to be built only in conjunction with an urban renewal program. Of the 810,000 units authorized by the 1949 act over six years, only 200,000 were completed during that period.9 By mid-decade, most public housing appropriations would go to large cities to be used as a subordinate component of urban renewal. Without exception, public housing combined with urban renewal to produce explicit racial overtones. Examples include the programs in New York City, Cincinnati, Chicago, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh. The extensive slum clearance and redevelopment of these cities were supported by a large public housing program, used as a last resort to warehouse those who were considered social rejects and not economically viable within the modern city’s spatial order.10 Referenda battles would continue in the years following the 1952 Proposition B in Los Angeles, though the results were not as favorable to public housing opponents as those that occurred from 1949 through 1952. Indeed, public housing would be afWrmed rather than rejected by local electorates in the majority of referenda. Following the program’s nadir in the mid-1950s, public housing appropriations began to increase along with the intensity of urban renewal. Public housing would burgeon during the 1960s due to the militant demands by low-income, primarily minority, inner-city dwellers. By 1972, the 810,000 units of public housing that were authorized by the 1949 Housing Act had Wnally been constructed. In 1973, unable to cope with the Wnancial pressure of the ill-housed, a moratorium was declared on the federal public housing program, suspending new authorizations (see Figure 18).11 The Fragmentation and Nullification of the Left With the opening of the 1950s, the Left appeared to be a viable force in local politics in Los Angeles. However, it suffered a landmark defeat with the downfall of the public housing program and the victory of Norris Poulson over Fletcher Bowron in the 1953 mayoral race. This defeat was inseparable from the political fragmentation of the Left. Its splintering was given the coup de grâce by the Red Scare, from which the Left never reconstituted itself.

192

Conclusion

The demise of public housing in Los Angeles can be partly understood as a result of increasing access to homeownership diminishing the demand for public housing. Having recovered momentum by 1949, the private housing industry was producing—both locally and nationally—at record levels. Los Angeles, though, was still short of 161,113 needed housing units. “The decline in enthusiasm for housing reform,” wrote historian Richard Davies, “resulted primarily from the high rate of housing construction during the postwar years.” The peak construction year was 1950, which “appeased the cries of the public for housing reform, and sapped the effectiveness of the housing reformers.”12 The institutional support by labor unions, the heart of the leftliberal popular front, for public housing declined while private home ownership increased. By the early 1950s, a union wage precluded members of organized labor from qualifying for low-rent public housing. The rising real wage of union members combined with the increased output of the private construction industry to create an expanding suburban housing market. From their suburban homes, union members would become willing participants in the pro-growth coalition and the realization of corporate modern Los Angeles.13 The above observations need to be placed in political context. It has been suggested that the primary reason for the intensity and voracity

Figure 18. Public housing construction in the United States. From Henry Aaron, “Low-Rent Public Housing,” in Housing the Poor, ed. Donald J. Reeb and James T. Kirk Jr. (New York: Praeger, 1973), 192–210.

Conclusion

193

of the Red Scare in Los Angeles was the fragility of the Left’s alliance with liberal reformers combined with the retrenchment of the Right. The power of organized labor as a proponent of public housing was curtailed as the unions distanced themselves from the allegedly Communist-inXuenced CHA. The left-dominated California CIO Council, for instance, had been at odds with the national CIO since the former had supported the third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace in 1948. The California CIO Council was labeled a “Communist Party front” by CIO president Philip Murray in January 1950, and its afWliation with the national CIO had been revoked. The Los Angeles organization of leftist renegades was ousted in favor of the ofWcial Greater Los Angeles CIO Council. The California CIO’s Labor Herald ceased publication in March 1953. Organized labor’s left thus did not play a very inXuential role in the seminal 1953 election.14 In a similar manner, minority support of public housing must be gauged within the Cold War political atmosphere. African American and Mexican American political opinion regarding public housing was bitterly divided, though proponents of public housing were the more numerous. Editorializing against the public housing program in 1951, the Sentinel reminded its black readership that houses currently could be had for a down payment of about $500—far cheaper than three years earlier. The paper would continue its promotion of private over public housing throughout the public housing war, while the Eagle was vociferously pro–public housing.15 Bowron’s move to the right in the immediate postwar years alienated many of the left-liberal interest groups. Indeed, it was a refusal to participate by African Americans and Mexican Americans in the 1953 mayoralty race that may have cost Bowron another term in ofWce. After having protested, to little avail, to Bowron throughout the postwar period of police brutality, these ethnic minorities turned out to vote in low numbers. “Apparently,” observed historian Thomas Sitton, “this segment of the population stayed home rather than approve the continuation of the LAPD’s treatment of minorities.” The depth of this antagonism can be illustrated by veteran black assemblyman Augustus Hawkins, an avid public housing proponent, who nevertheless served as Poulson’s 1953 campaign manager in exchange for inXuence in recommending future Police Commission appointees. Hawkins’s role, recalled Poulson, “surely cut into the expected Bowron majority [in the black districts] resulting from the housing issue.”16 In the unparalleled postwar prosperity, the inXuence of organized

194

Conclusion

religion within the Left was curtailed by a divergence between socially conscious clergy and worldly oriented believers. The latter identiWed public housing as both un-American and un-Christian. In a 1952 letter to the editor of the Times, G. Spencer Wice challenged the advocacy of public housing by the Methodist clergy. “Many of us Methodist laymen feel in the strongest way that the housing program is antiChristian. The very foundation of the Christian family is the home. The home Xourished on the basis of individual homeownership [that] should be encouraged rather than discouraged by offering so-called low-rental housing.” Rev. R. P. (Bob) Schuler wrote to the City Council that he, unlike some of his fellow clergymen who had voiced their support of the public housing program, was “one Methodist preacher [who] is not behind it. I have had my Wll of Socialism.”17 Similarly, Mrs. Frances Lee O’Connor berated Mayor Bowron for his advocacy of public housing: “And don’t Let Monsignor O’Dwyer’s stand go to your head, for he only speaks for the minority of we Catholics.” Home builder Fritz Burns was a major Wnancial contributor to the Catholic Church in Los Angeles, as well as an intimate personal friend of James Francis Cardinal McIntyre. The church hierarchy did not look kindly on the liberalism of Monsignor O’Dwyer and the CHC. Following the Red-baiting of Wilkinson, McIntyre sent O’Dwyer on retreat, probably, believes Wilkinson, to rethink his relationship with an alleged Communist. After an extremely close personal relationship lasting Wfteen years, Wilkinson never saw O’Dwyer again.18 Increasingly alienated from the Bowron administration during the postwar years, the Communist Party frequently and pointedly castigated the policies of “hizzoner” on a wide range of issues. During the public housing war, Bowron’s support of the embattled program was criticized as weak, wafXing, or Janus-faced. Despite admiration of Bowron’s campaigning against the interests of the Times and antipathy to the anti–public housing rhetoric of Poulson, the People’s World remained neutral in the 1953 elections. The IPP, on the other hand, threw its support to Bowron. Though sharing a common history with the Communist Party of antagonism toward the mayor, the IPP ultimately viewed Bowron as far less of a political threat than the business-oriented Poulson.19 As the fragmenting Left stumbled into the 1953 municipal elections, the major newspapers (with the exception of the Daily News) presented public housing to the electorate as some form of socialism or Communism that was alien to the American way of life or, at best, as an

Conclusion

195

outmoded relic of the New Deal. Bowron’s advocacy of public housing was denigrated in proportion to Poulson’s opposition. The day-to-day news coverage and reporting were hardly objective. In the twenty-day period prior to the May 26, 1953, mayoral election, the Times gave 1,019 inches of type, 207.5 inches of photographs, and 77 news items to Poulson, compared to 219 inches of type, 24 inches of photographs, and 0 news items to Bowron.20 The Red Scare, Social Democratic Reform, and the Welfare State By the end of World War II, the policies of the welfare state were very popular and in good standing. The postwar period witnessed a massive and concerted assault by the business community against the welfare state and New Deal liberalism. Carey McWilliams analyzed the Red Scare as witch-hunting to deal with the modern revival of heresy. “In short, policies, ideas, attitudes, and state of mind,” wrote McWilliams, “. . . make up the crime of heresy.” Red Scare politics slowly escalated by means of Red-baiting; enforced loyalty oaths; subversive guilt determined by association, innuendo, or political belief; and economic, social, and political ostracism of potential nonconformists, to reach a crescendo in the McCarthyism of the early 1950s. The Red Scare—the fear of political alternatives combined with the state-sanctioned equation of dissent with disloyalty—was, ultimately, the political nulliWcation of the Left’s agenda of social democratic reform within the welfare state.21 Major issues of that agenda, like public housing, that would shape the direction of policy in Los Angeles were polarized by the Red Scare between liberal and conservative antipodes, with little common ground for either debate or consensus. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that despite the plethora of personal misfortunes, blacklisting, jailings, and deportations, “McCarthyism’s main impact may well have been in what did not happen rather than in what did—the social reforms that were never adopted” and “the unWnished agenda of the New Deal.” Similarly, Frank Wilkinson believes that losing his job and being blacklisted was a personal tragedy that masked the social tragedy of the good housing that was never built.22 The Red Scare attacked not only the policies of the political Left but, more importantly, was a means to assault leftist thought. “Today it is quite clear,” wrote Carey McWilliams in 1950, “that any criticism of social conditions is likely to be met with a charge of Communism and the knowledge that this can happen has had a clear tendency to

196

Conclusion

stiXe social criticism.” Obliterated was the discourse of the Left’s vision of the welfare state, of community modernism, of public housing, and of social democratic reform. “In those days,” recalled Frank Wilkinson, “anti-communism got into every bit of your language. It was a protective shield for whatever political thoughts you might hold.” Any assertion that had roots in leftist theory or practice had to be prefaced and qualiWed by the phrase, “I’m not a Communist, but . . .” For example: I’m not a Communist, but public housing is a humane program. The result of the Red Scare was a skewed and unbalanced pseudodemocracy in which the free association of ideas and a diversity of political thought were reduced to one dimension.23 A few courageous contemporaries recognized and deplored the dangers of this. In September 1950, the Los Angeles City Council passed the Communist Registration Ordinance requiring Communist Party members to register with the city’s police. The sole opponent to the ordinance was Councilman Edward R. Roybal. Speaking in council chambers, he bitterly denounced Communism but stated that the council should not attempt to “Wght Communism [by] sacriWce[ing] our Democracy.” The ordinance was part of, he stated, “a great tide of terror creeping across the nation leaving in its wake a near-chaos of hysteria and paralysis of moral principle.” Though perhaps insigniWcant and certainly unpopular, Roybal said, his opposition to the ordinance “must be taken while time and civil liberties remain.”24 Was the Red Scare a valid response to actual subversion? I have not been able to travel to the former Soviet Union and examine archival sources to see if there is any reference to Kremlin complicity in the public housing war in Los Angeles. However, as Leonard Freedman has pointed out, the principle of that program—the public ownership of housing for the poor—could not expect to escape the venom of the Red Scare. Moreover, charges of socialism and Communism functioned to provide the “messianic fervor” to hold together the various anti–public housing groups in their lengthy and sustained struggle against the program. As part of the left-liberal popular front, the Communist Party was—like the AFL, CIO, CHC, church groups, civic associations, the League of Women Voters, and others—prominent in the advocacy of and quite possibly inXuential in the management of the public housing program.25 It is more relevant to ask who beneWted by the Red Scare politics deployed against public housing. Small landlords, property owners, rental agents, and others saw public housing as a direct threat to their

Conclusion

197

entrepreneurial proWts. The Small Property Owners League formed the shock troops that unceasingly barraged the CHA with indictments of un-Americanism in the early 1950s. The threat of an expanding program was menacing to many of the enterprises that constituted the real estate lobby. Home builder Fritz Burns’s short-term monetary gains, though certainly not insigniWcant, were overshadowed as the demise of public housing greatly enhanced the relative market position of privately mass-produced tract housing for progressively lower-income homebuyers.26 Those who proWted the most from Red Scare politics were largescale commercial and property interests. The geography of an expanded public housing program—the built environment of the non-marketoriented and pathetically humane urbanism of community modernism— would have poor investment potential compared to that of a dynamic corporate modernism. As an active supporter in municipal politics of these interests, Los Angeles City Councilman Ed J. Davenport received monetary gifts that were the subject of a postmortem tax suit by the IRS. Political gains accrued to those running for public ofWce—like Norris Poulson—who accepted, quite readily, the opportunism that antiCommunism offered.27 The impact of the Red Scare, however, seems not to have been primarily economic, nor was it a means for certain individuals to enhance their Wnancial fortunes. Its legacy is a political one. The Red Scare enclosed the practice and implementation of the Left’s vision of a better world. The achievement of community modernism through an agenda of social democratic reform was the political target. In Los Angeles, the death of public housing and the demise of the Left were intimately linked to the Red Scare. The political geography of the cityscape, unencumbered by the discredited vision of community modernism, was wideopen to reconstruction by a vigorous postwar capitalism. Urban renewal would realize a corporate modern city. The strategy of the Left had been to wield the welfare state for the beneWt of the Roosevelt coalition with the goal of making a better world by means of social democratic reform. The implementation of community modernism and the public housing program was an example of this goal. With the defeat of the Left, the form of the welfare state was managed by the vital center of the Keynesian coalition, yet its content as a tool to promote the concerns of the working classes had been depleted. No longer an opposition to capitalism, the welfare state became intimately integrated with the accumulation process and

198

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the maintenance of class composition. The anticapitalist cycle of struggles that began in the 1960s were often antistatist in form and forced the collapse of the Keynesian “social factory” that had emerged from the Great Depression. But these movements were antagonistic to the welfare state of capital, what Antonio Negri called the “state-as-planner.” “The development of the mode of production,” admonished Negri, “leads us to recognize that to say State is the only way to say capital: a socialized capital.”28 The Modern Cityscape and the Rise of Movement Politics Used as a tool to destroy the agenda of social democratic reform of the Left, the Red Scare also marked the demise of public housing and the ascent of urban renewal. In the process, the structure of the modern city was removed from the popular discourse that had motivated the Left and was instead deWned by the urban elite. Urban renewal united conservatives, liberals, and planners—no longer left-leaning partisans of a better world but now mandarins of the modern city—in a pro-growth coalition that removed “political power from the groups that were to be displaced.” In this manner, modern Los Angeles, shaped by urban renewal and insulated from popular participation in political alternatives, might be described as nothing short of the spatial expression of the Red Scare.29 In the politics of corporate modernism, however, the divisiveness, polarity, and bombasticity of the Red Scare that had marked the public housing program was notably absent. The public housing and urban renewal programs shared many of the same characteristics—government administration and eminent domain infringing on private property rights—which had been orchestrated by the press so that the former was labeled Communistic or socialistic. Despite the bitter and frequent denunciation of the CRA and urban renewal by small property owners for precisely these reasons, the press never broadcast such opinions to the extent of the slurs hurled at the CHA during the public housing war.30 By the 1960s, urban renewal plans for Los Angeles targeted minority ghettos or barrios. Watts, Little Tokyo, Temple-Beaudry, Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Canoga Park, and Pacoima are examples. With the decline of the Left and its advocacy of social democratic reform, direct action emerged as the way to protest and inXuence the urban renewal program of modern Los Angeles. A model for such action was the initiative of the Chavez Ravine residents in 1959. Eastside activists

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dubbed the CRA the “Chicano Removal Agency,” and Rodolfo Acuña observed that “the Wght against renewal projects that destroyed more housing than they rebuilt politicized many Chicano activists.” In analyzing the causes of the 1965 Watts riot, community leaders often saw the chronic housing conditions of South-Central Los Angeles as a tacit factor. The growth of “black power” and “Chicano power” tactics were paralleled by a difWdence on the part of the CRA to encroach in the African American and Latino communities of Los Angeles.31 On the national level, the fact that 70 percent of renewal displacees were black gave substance to the equation “urban renewal = Negro removal.” There was a connection between urban renewal and the civil disturbances of the 1960s as the development of the modern city was directly challenged by inner-city dwellers. John Mollenkopf noted, “Virtually all of the riot areas were sites of major urban renewal efforts: quite frequently struggles over the nature of renewal lurked behind the riots as an implicit issue.” The civil disturbances in Los Angeles would be used to shield and retrench the modern city. The 1965 Watts riot stimulated fears among downtown business and commercial interests of a damaged downtown economy due to an immanent invasion by militant minorities. The Committee for Central City Planning recommended declaring all of the central business district, in addition to the existent Bunker Hill and Little Tokyo projects, a redevelopment area.32 “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” The Red Scare erased the left wing from the spectrum of U.S. representative democracy, warping the national political culture by precluding an agenda of popular social democratic reform. The vital center liberals exchanged their support of the national security state for a moderate domestic policy. The nascent “New Left” of the 1960s was not simply the reassertion of the “Old Left.” Whereas the latter had sought to generate an electoral consensus for its agenda of social democratic reform, the former utilized direct protest and demonstration to address immediate demands. They shunned the formal structure of party politics in favor of the movement.33 From being a vital center liberal, it was but a short hop, skip, and jump into the camp of the Eisenhower conservatives, a transition made by many erstwhile-liberal public housing advocates. In an interview in a 1957 Fortune article, one such liberal-cum-realist complained, about public housing tenants, that “we got them in nice new apartments with modern kitchens and a recreation center. And they’re the same

200

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bunch of bastards they always were.” From an administrative perspective, the projects began to lose the sense of community that had been promoted by the Left and began to acquire the function of human warehousing and the form of welfare state barracks. The vision of the Left, that of public housing as a beacon to illuminate the way to a better world, was gone.34 Assuming the mantel of U.S. liberalism, the politics of the vital center would climax in disastrous results, at home and abroad. Just as the defeat of the Left in foreign policy would lead to the war in Vietnam, its defeat in domestic policy similarly would culminate in the civil unrest of the ghettos and barrios during the 1960s. Gerald Horne has explored the extent to which the political vacuum in the African American community in Los Angeles that occurred with the eradication of the city’s Left during the Red Scare was a central factor in understanding the 1965 Watts riot and the black politics of the 1960s. Writing in the aftermath of the riot, Frank Wilkinson considered this event in light of the rise and fall of the public housing program in Los Angeles in which he had been so intimately involved. He opined that the political violence and rage of those civil disturbances might have been unnecessary had the social democratic reform and community modernism of the Left not been destroyed during the previous decade. Living in integrated and modern housing, and not conWned to the ghetto, African American politics might have had a foundation very different from that which led to Watts. “Thus,” sadly concluded Wilkinson, “the sixties reap the folly of the Wfties.”35 Although the Left and the public housing program it championed were casualties of the Cold War, this does not mean that the motivations or the popular struggles that gave rise to the Left—the social inequality, economic oppression, and inhumane living conditions and the subsequent moral outrage—can be similarly eulogized. The making of a better world, an improved and fulWlling way of living motivated by a critical and questioning spirit, appeared again in the New Left and the movement politics of the 1960s. It is a resilient and ultimately feasible social goal that will not go away. In 1982, erstwhile public housing architect Robert Alexander wrote to me of working in “slums in sixstory wooden walk-up tenements in LA with Frank [Wilkinson]. . . . Nothing against him in my book. If somebody didn’t question our system in the Great Depression he was dead between the ears. It’s time to question it again and again.”36

Chronology of Public Housing Events in Los Angeles

September 1, 1937

Housing Act of 1937

March 21, 1938

California Enabling Legislation

June 2, 1938

Founding of City Housing Authority

September 16, 1938

Election of Fletcher Bowron as mayor of Los Angeles

March 9, 1939

Ramona Gardens Cooperation Agreement

December 14, 1939

Rancho San Pedro Cooperation Agreement

December 14, 1939

Pueblo del Rio Cooperation Agreement

May 9, 1940

Aliso Village Cooperation Agreement

October 14, 1940

Lanham Act

November 8, 1940

Estrada Courts Cooperation Agreement

November 8, 1940

Rose Hill Courts Cooperation Agreement

January 22, 1941

William Mead Homes Cooperation Agreement

January 22, 1941

Hacienda Village Cooperation Agreement

March 27, 1941

Avalon Gardens Cooperation Agreement

June 3, 1941

Fickett Hollow/Pico Gardens Cooperation Agreement

1942–1945

CHA management of Wve permanent and twenty-one temporary public war housing projects

July 11, 1945

CA Community Redevelopment Act

November 23, 1945

Beginning of Wilmington Hall occupancy

April 27, 1946

Dedication of Rodger Young Village

June 1946

Beginning of Keppler Grove occupancy 201

202

Chronology

December 1946

Beginning of Basilone Homes occupancy

March 23–24, 1947

Veterans’ Housing Caravan

April 15, 1948

Council declaration of need for CRA

November 2, 1948

Defeat of Proposition 14

July 15, 1949

Housing Act of 1949

August 8, 1949

Council approval of 10,000-unit public housing contract

September 20, 1949

Declaration of Bunker Hill redevelopment area

November 7, 1950

Approval of Proposition 10

November 22, 1950

Council approval of public housing sites

April 3, 1951

Defeat of Proposition C (Bunker Hill funding)

June 26, 1951

Council approval of sites over Planning Commission objections

December 26, 1951

Council vote to abrogate public housing contract

April 28, 1952

California Supreme Court’s upholding of contract

June 3, 1952

Proposition B vote

August 29, 1952

Refusal by Frank Wilkinson to divulge his politics

September 26 and October 28, 1952

California Un-American Activities Committee Hearings

November 4, 1952

Approval of Proposition 18

May 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 1953

House Special Subcommittee on Government Operations Hearings

May 26, 1953

Election of Norris Poulson as mayor of Los Angeles

August 5, 1953

Renegotiation of public housing contract

August 2, 1954

Housing Act of 1954

November 15, 1954

Authorization by City Council of loan requests for Bunker Hill redevelopment

July 1, 1955

Sale of Chavez Ravine to City of Los Angeles

November 7, 1956

Council approval of Bunker Hill tentative plan

October 7, 1957

Council approval of Dodger agreement

June 3, 1958

Approval of Dodger referendum (Proposition B)

March 31, 1959

Council approval of Bunker Hill Wnal plan

May 8, 1959

Chavez Ravine evictions

May 31, 1961

Election of Sam Yorty as mayor of Los Angeles

April 10, 1962

Opening of Dodger Stadium

June 25, 2015

Forecast end date for Bunker Hill project

APPENDIX A

The File on Frank Wilkinson

The Wle on Frank Wilkinson, on which the allegations of Communist domination of the CHA were based, was read by Chief William Parker of the LAPD at the televised hearings of the House Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations in May 1953: MR. MCKENNA

[William F. McKenna, general counsel, House Committee on Government Operations]: Would you read the information with respect to Frank Wilkinson, exercising the privilege of eliminating sources or anything that would prejudice the present operation of the police force? CHIEF PARKER: I might say there is nothing in these reports to indicate their source. This information came to me through ofWcial channels. THE CHAIRMAN: This is an ofWcial record? CHIEF PARKER: That is correct, sir. The report on Wilkinson, dated January 31, 1952, is entitled: Wilkinson, Frank B. Wife: Jean Benson Wilkinson. 2019 Rodney Drive, Los Angeles, Calif. Former addresses: 5219 Denny Avenue, North Hollywood; 12471 Chandler, North Hollywood; 11327 Kiel St., Los Angeles; 2351 Edgewater Terrace, Los Angeles; 1319 Via Portola, Los Angeles; 300 South Oakhurst Drive, Beverly Hills. Above subject is director of information for the Los Angeles Housing Authority. He was born in Michigan. He attended Beverly Hills High from 1928 to 1932; UCLA from 1932 to 1936, majoring in political 203

204

Appendix A

science, and received his B.A. degree on June 19, 1936. While a student at UCLA, subject was an active member of the American Students Union, a Communist organized and controlled student organization, and at an ASU meeting on April 25, 1936, he and another student, Gilbert Harrison, made a peace action report to the meeting. On May 7, 1943, subject attended the Communist Workers School class held at the First Unitarian Church, 2938 West 8th Street. (NOTE.—This was a Communist school. Communist and front organizations hold meeting regularly at the Unitarian Church. Former pastor was Reverend Caldecott; present pastor is Rev. Stephen Fritchman, member of and very active in Communistfront organizations.) On August 28, 1943, subject attended a People’s World Party, 2400 Hidalgo Avenue, Los Angeles. Subject was a contributor to the American Youth for Democracy. (NOTE. Successor to the Young Communist League from 1943 to 1949.) On October 26, 1946, subject endorsed an organizational conference of the Congress of American Women (CP front organization) held at the Friday Morning Club. MR. MCKENNA: Is “CP” Communist Party? CHIEF PARKER: Yes. It is abbreviated. In 1947 subject was a member of the board of directors of the Council for Civic Unity, a non-Communist but heavily CP inWltrated organization. In 1947 subject was on the mailing list of the Civil Rights Congress, a Communist defense organization. In 1947 (February) subject was the principal speaker at a meeting of the Committee of One Thousand Home Buyers, also known as the Veterans Home Buyers Association, held in Los Angeles High School auditorium. These organizations were organized and controlled by the Communist Party. The chairman was Harper W. Poulson, Communist Party, Los Angeles County section; Byron V. Citron, vice chairman; Sam Houston Allen, attorney, law Wrm of Allen & Steinmetz, both named numerous times as active members of the Communist Party. On March 6, 1947, subject was a speaker at a meeting of the United Negro and Allied Veterans, held at 4016 South Central Avenue. Other speakers were Karen Morley, Frances Williams (both members of the Communist Party; Karen Morley is at the present time out of the city, as Federal investigators are attempting to serve her with a subpoena for testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee).

Appendix A

205

In November 1945 subject was a principal speaker at the Downtown Forum 215¾ South Spring Street. This forum was organized and controlled by the Communist Party. Weekly meetings were held at the above address. Subject was one of the principal speakers at a meeting of the Congress of American Women (a Communist front) held August 14, 1948, at the Alexandria Hotel. Speakers were Pearl Fagelson, Virginia Brodine, Frances Williamson, and William B. Esterman, all members of the Communist Party. Subject was a delegate to the Mid Century White House Conference on Children and Youth held at Pepperdine College on September 16, 1950. (NOTE. This was not a Communist organized conference. The local Communists emphasized the election of delegates to participate in this conference. During the conference, and afterward, Communist functionaries boasted that they had controlled the conference almost in its entirety.) Subject attended a meeting sponsored by the Independent Progressive Party 10763 Valleyheart Drive, North Hollywood, November 2, 1950. Subject was accompanied by his wife Jean. Subject has been an active member of the Communist Party, Los Angeles County section, for many years. He has been assigned to various clubs and is presently a member of the Altgeld Club of the Communist Party. (NOTE.—The Altgeld Clubs are primarily for members employed in or by the Federal Government, State, county, or municipal governments. They are exceptionally cozy clubs. The purpose of this is to protect the Communist Party members.) Subject’s wife, Jean Benson Wilkinson, is a teacher with the Los Angeles Board of Education and is teaching at the East Los Angeles Girls Vocational High School. Subject joined the Communist Party in 1941; at that time she was a member of the AFL Teachers Local 430. (Note:—The charter of this local was revoked by the National AFL Council because of Communist leadership in the union.) That is the end of the report.1 Following his dismissal from the CHA, Wilkinson became involved in the struggle to abolish HUAC. In July 1958, HUAC announced its intention to conduct a series of hearings in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilkinson, as a representative of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, went to Atlanta for the purpose of lending his support to those who were Wghting against the hearings. Wilkinson was served with a subpoena requiring his appearance before the committee, but he refused to cooperate with HUAC,

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responding, “As a matter of conscience and personal responsibility, I refuse to answer any questions of this committee.” When HUAC asked whether he was then a member of the Communist Party, he stated: I challenge, in the most fundamental sense, the legality of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It is my opinion that this committee stands in direct violation by its mandate and by its practices of the Wrst amendment to the United States Constitution. It is my belief that Congress had no authority to establish this committee in the Wrst instance, nor to instruct it with the mandate which it has. I have the utmost respect for the broad powers which the Congress of the United States must have to carry on its investigations for legislative purposes. However, the United States Supreme Court has held that, broad as these powers may be, the Congress cannot investigate into an area where it cannot legislate, and this committee tends, by its mandate and by its practices, to investigate into precisely those areas of free speech, religion, peaceful association and assembly, and the press, wherein it cannot legislate and therefore it cannot investigate. Wilkinson did not assert his rights under the Fifth Amendment. Rather, he contended that the committee had no lawful authority to interrogate him and that its questioning violated his rights under the First Amendment. For refusing to answer, he was convicted in federal court of a violation of 2 U.S.C. 192—which makes it a misdemeanor for any person summoned as a witness by either house of Congress or a committee thereof to refuse to answer any question pertinent to the inquiry—and sentenced to one year in prison. His conviction was upheld by a 5–4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961. Justice Potter Stewart, stating the majority opinion, ruled that HUAC had probable cause to investigate Wilkinson and that his First Amendment rights had to be “balanced” in light of governmental investigations.2 In his dissenting opinion, Justice Hugo Black observed that the presumption by HUAC that Wilkinson was a Communist was based on mere innuendo—totally worthless for the purpose of establishing probable cause to obtain Wilkinson’s subpoena to testify: The result of [this ruling] is that from now on anyone who takes a public position contrary to that being urged by the House Un-American Activities Committee should realize that he runs the risk of being subpoenaed to appear at a hearing in some far off place, of being questioned with regard to every minute detail of his past life, of being asked to repeat all the gossip he may have heard about any of his friends and acquaintances, of being accused by the Committee

Appendix A

207

of membership in the Communist Party, of being held up to the public as a subversive and a traitor, of being jailed for contempt if he refuses to cooperate with the Committee in its probe of his mind and associations, and of being branded by his neighbors, employer and erstwhile friends as a menace to society regardless of the outcome of that hearing. With such a powerful weapon in its hands, it seems quite likely that the Committee will weather all criticism, even though justiWable, that may be directed toward it. For there are not many people in our society who will have the courage to speak out against such a formidable opponent. . . . If the present trend continues, this already small number will necessarily dwindle as their ranks are thinned by the jails. Government by consent will disappear to be replaced by government by intimidation. . . . . . . Our Constitution, in unequivocal terms, gives the right to each of us to say what we think without fear of the power of the Government. That principle has served us so well for so long that I cannot believe it necessary to allow any governmental group to reject it in order to preserve its own existence. Least of all do I believe that such a privilege should be accorded the House Un-American Activities Committee. For I believe that true Americanism is to be protected, not by committees that persecute unorthodox minorities, but by strict adherence to basic principles of freedom that are responsible for this Nation’s greatness. Those principles are embodied for all who care to see in our Bill of Rights. They were put there for the speciWc purpose of preventing just the sort of governmental suppression of criticism that the majority upholds here.3 Following his prison sentence, Wilkinson was involved in two ACLUsponsored court litigations—the 1963 Wilkinson v. Governor Moore and the 1964 Wilkinson v. President Faucet—which successfully overturned the banning of speech at the University of North Carolina and the University of Ohio, respectively. As chairman of the Citizens Committee to Preserve American Freedoms and Weld secretary of the National Committee to Abolish HUAC, Wilkinson’s efforts to assert and protect First Amendment rights were closely monitored by the FBI, as was subsequently disclosed in Wilkinson v. FBI (1986) (see below). One of the released FBI documents revealed an assassination attempt on Wilkinson, to be overseen by the Anti-Subversive Detail of the LAPD, at a March 4, 1964, ACLU meeting in Sherman Oaks at which Wilkinson was speaking.4 In 1980, as the executive director of the National Committee against Repressive Legislation (NCARL), Wilkinson brought suit against the FBI in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, charging the FBI of violating his civil rights by its unwarranted surveillance. During the

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course of the trial, the FBI was forced to reveal 132,000 pages of surveillance on Wilkinson. Under the personal supervision of J. Edgar Hoover, such investigations began in 1942 when Wilkinson opposed the proposed racial segregation of the Pueblo del Rio public housing project (see chapter 2). Under a settlement reached in 1987, the FBI agreed to place all its documents on Wilkinson and NCARL in the National Archives, under seal for Wfty years, and to pay monetary damages should there be any further surveillance of Wilkinson or NCARL.5 In February 1989, Wilkinson petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia for a writ of error to vacate his conviction for contempt of Congress that had been conWrmed in the 1961 Wilkinson v. United States. An FBI document, released during Wilkinson v. FBI, indicated that the bureau considered the witness who provided the assertion to HUAC that Wilkinson was a Communist to be unreliable and emotionally unstable. The informer’s testimony had been crucial in establishing the probable cause upholding Wilkinson’s Supreme Court conviction, and it has been the only direct testimony identifying Wilkinson as a member of the Communist Party. Nevertheless, countered the court, the procedure leading to Wilkinson’s conviction remained valid and did not warrant a writ of error. The district judge granted the government’s motion to dismiss Wilkinson’s petition. Wilkinson appealed this decision to the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992. Chief Judge Gerald B. TjofXat, however, seemed more concerned with whether or not it was true that Wilkinson was a Communist than with the questionable source of those accusations. “I think,” Wilkinson opined to a reporter of this judicial uneasiness, “that the secret is to outlive the bastards.”6 Robert Alexander, Los Angeles public housing architect and chairman of the City Planning Commission from 1945–50, recalled being smeared in the Tenney Committee reports because of his association with Wilkinson. In his 1989 oral history interview, Alexander offered a very astute insight into Wilkinson’s adamant refusal to answer the political queries demanded by various government committees: “I knew him [Wilkinson] very well as a friend and a business associate. I still think he’s a great guy. His father was a minister who instilled in him some sound American principles. [I.e.,] ‘It’s none of your goddamned business what I think.’”7

APPENDIX B

Sources

Taped Interviews All interviews were conducted by Don Parson, with the exception of two (those of Simon Eisner and of Frank Wilkinson on December 8, 1981) conducted by Don Parson and Laura Chase. Drayton Bryant (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; August 20, 1982) Simon Eisner (Los Angeles; December 4, 1981) Wilbur Gordon (Los Angeles; September 28, 1982) Sidney Green (Van Nuys, California; July 8, 1982) Kenneth Hahn (Los Angeles; April 27, 1997) Oliver Haskell (Venice, California; October 3, 1982) Oliver Haskell (Venice, California; May 4, 1996) Roger C. Johnson (Hollywood, California; May 10, 1982) Alice McGrath (Thousand Oaks, California; January 28, 1995) Jack and Rose Naiditch (North Hollywood, California; July 7, 1982) Edward Roybal (Los Angeles; October 10, 1996) Frank Wilkinson (Los Angeles; December 8, 1981) Frank Wilkinson (Los Angeles; June 26, 1996) Frank Wilkinson (Los Angeles; July 3, 1996) Harold Wise (Washington, D.C.; August 26, 1982) 209

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Oral History Transcripts Robert E. Alexander, “Architecture, Planning, and Social Responsibility,” interviewed by Marlene Laskey, 1989, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Herbert M. Baus, interviewed by Enid Hart Douglass, 1990, Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program. Reuben W. Borough, “Reuben W. Borough and California Reform Movements,” interviewed by Elizabeth Dixon, 1964, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Simon Eisner, “Simon Eisner: Seven Decades of Planning and Development in the Los Angeles Region,” interviewed by Edward A. Holden, 1992, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Van GrifWth, unprocessed oral history interview by Doyce B. Nunis Jr., 1967, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Kango Kunitsugo, interviewed by Dave Biniasz, November 28, 1973, California State University, Fullerton, Oral History Program, Japanese American Project. A. C. Martin, “Evolution of a Metropolitan Skyline,” interviewed by Marlene Laskey, 1985, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Alice GreenWeld McGrath, “The Education of Alice McGrath,” interviewed by Michael Balter, 1987, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Norris Poulson, “Who Would Have Ever Dreamed?,” memoirs of Norris Poulson, 1966, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. William B. Ross, interviewed by Enid H. Douglass, 1990, Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program. Harold H. Story, “Memoirs of Harold H. Story,” interviewed by Elizabeth Dixon, 1967, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Rosalind Wiener Wyman, “‘It’s a Girl’: Three Terms on the Los Angeles City Council, 1953–1965; Three Decades in the Democratic Party, 1948–1978,” interviewed by Malca Chall, 1980, Regional Oral History OfWce, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

Appendix B

211

Samuel Yorty, “Ask the Mayor: Samuel Yorty,” interviewed by Hynda Rudd, 1987, Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles. Manuscript Collections American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California Collection, Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles. Fletcher Bowron Collection. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Bunker Hill Collection. Regional History Center, University of Southern California. Civil Rights Congress Collection. Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles. John Anson Ford Collection. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Van GrifWth Collection. Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles. John Holland Papers. Special Collections, California State University at Los Angeles. John Ihlder Pamphlet Collection. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Records of the Independent Progressive Party and Californians for Liberal Representation, 1946–1975. Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles. Roger Johnson Collection. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. League of Women Voters Collection. Urban Archives, California State University at Northridge. Files of the Los Angeles City Council. Los Angeles City Archives, Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection. Urban Archives, California State University at Northridge. Max Mont Collection. Urban Archives, California State University at Northridge. Richard Neutra Collection. Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles. Edward Roybal Collection. Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles. Eshref Shevky Collection. Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles.

212

Appendix B

Southern California Urban Planning Collection. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Frank Wilkinson Papers. Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles. Newspapers California Eagle. A weekly covering the African American community in Los Angeles. Oriented decidedly leftward under the editorship of Charlotta Bass, the paper’s policy became more mainstream under its new owner, Loren Miller, in 1951. Eastside Sun. Beginning in 1945, a weekly covering issues of interest to the communities lying east of the Los Angeles River. Its editor was very sympathetic to left-liberal perspectives. Hollywood Citizen-News. A daily based in Hollywood. Frequently more liberal than its cross-town rivals the Times or Examiner, it became more and more conservative as the Cold War progressed. La Opinión. A daily and Sunday paper covering issues of interest to Los Angeles’s Spanish-speaking community. Labor Herald. Weekly paper of California’s CIO. Los Angeles Citizen. Weekly paper of the AFL in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Daily News. The only liberal and Democratic metropolitan daily and Sunday in Los Angeles. The paper was purchased in 1954 by the Times-Mirror Corporation and absorbed by the Mirror. Los Angeles Examiner. A Hearst paper. Many citations in the book (those without page numbers) are from the Examiner’s clipping Wles, stored at the USC Regional History Center. Los Angeles Herald and Express. A Hearst daily with sensationalistic coverage of the public housing battles during the 1950s. Los Angeles Mirror. Began publication in 1948 as a daily owned by the Chandler Press, but included a number of liberal writers. Following the 1954 acquisition of the Daily News, the paper became the Mirror-News. Los Angeles Sentinel. A weekly covering the African American community in Los Angeles, but much more conservative than the Eagle. Los Angeles Times. A conservative and Republican daily and Sunday appealing to an afXuent Westside readership. People’s World. The daily paper of the Communist Party on the West Coast. The paper became a weekly in 1957.

Notes

Introduction 1. “Three Million Need Homes, Wilkerson [sic] Tells ’Dena Meet,” California Eagle, June 26, 1947, 4. 2. The Los Angeles City Housing Authority (CHA—an acronym employed by the press in the 1940s and ’50s) is currently one of the country’s largest public housing authorities. Between 1955 and 1965, the housing stock of the CHA consisted of 8,609 conventional public housing units in twenty-one projects. Under the Housing Act of 1965, the CHA administered the Section 8 certiWcates and vouchers and the Section 23 leased-housing program. Currently, the CHA is landlord of the conventional public housing units, 44,000 Section 8 units, 1,600 other affordable-housing units, and an undetermined number of units on scattered sites. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 1973–1977 Highlights (Los Angeles, 1977), http://www.hacla.org. 3. Antonio Negri, “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State,” in Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form, ed. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 23–51. 4. David A. Gold, “The Rise and Decline of the Keynesian Coalition,” Kapitalistate 6 (1977): 143–44. 5. Earl Browder, “The American Communist Party in the Thirties,” in As We Saw the Thirties, ed. Rita James Simon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 236; Frank A. Warren III, Liberals and Communism: The “Red Decade” Revisited (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966). 6. Robert E. Park, “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,” in The City (1925), ed. 213

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Notes to Introduction

Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKenzie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 45; Roderick D. McKenzie, “The Ecological Approach to the Study of Human Communities,” in Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, The City, 71. 7. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949) (Boston: Houghton MifXin Company, 1962); Mary Sperling McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947–1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), p. 8 and ch. 5, “The New Liberalism”; Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973). 8. Irwin Ross, “What Happened in 1948,” in Harry S. Truman and the Fair Deal, ed. Alonzo L. Hamby (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974), 101–26; Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946–1948 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971); Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1973), 379. 9. See John Mollenkopf, “The Postwar Politics of Urban Development,” in Marxism and the Metropolis, ed. William Tabb and Larry Sawers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 117–52. 10. Robert Alexander to Don Parson, January 13, 1982, in possession of Don Parson. 11. Albert Mayer, “Public Housing Architecture Evaluated from PWA Days up to 1962,” Journal of Housing 19 (October 15, 1962): 450. 12. Richard J. Neutra, “Homes and Housing,” in Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan, ed. George W. Robbins and L. Deming Tilton (Los Angeles: PaciWc Southwest Academy, 1941), 194, 197–200. 13. Langdon W. Post, The Challenge of Housing (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1938), 292–93; Richard Neutra, quoted in “Architect Sees Healthy Growth,” Los Angeles Mirror, June 13, 1951, 19. 14. David Harvey, in The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), contrasts postmodern urbanism to the modern city. I have explored aspects of postmodern Los Angeles in a similar manner: Don Parson, “Many Histories: Postmodern Politics in Los Angeles,” Science as Culture 12 (1991): 411–25; Parson, “The Search for a Centre: The Recomposition of Race and Class in Los Angeles,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17, no. 2 (June 1993): 232–40. 15. A. C. Martin, “Evolution of a Metropolitan Skyline,” transcript of interview by Marlene Laskey, 1985 (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 105; on the planned dispersion of housing,

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services, and jobs, see Greg G. Hise, “The Roots of the Postwar Urban Region: Mass-Housing and Community Development in California, 1920–1950” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1992); Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 16. Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City (1973) (Montreal: Black Rose Press, 1986), 103. 17. Mayer, “Public Housing Architecture Evaluated,” 452, 453. 18. Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Big Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 21, 48–50; John Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 1. The New Day of Decent Housing 1. Albert Mayer, “Let Us Demand a Housing Program,” Nation, October 10, 1934, 404; Mayer, “A Practical Housing Program,” Nation 141 (October 16, 1935), 432. 2. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 53–55; John T. Metzger, “Rebuilding Harlem: Public Housing and Urban Renewal, 1920–1960,” Planning Perspectives 9 (1994): 260. 3. Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, Urban Housing: The Story of the PWA Housing Division, 1933–1936, Bulletin No. 2 (Washington, D.C., August 1936), 14, 15, 31, 32; Nathaniel S. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930 (New York: Universe Books, 1973), 28; United States v. Certain Lands in City of Louisville, 78 F.(2d) 684 (1935). See also Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), ch. 4. 4. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis, 29–30; Timothy McDonnell, The Wagner Housing Act (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1957), ch. 3. 5. McDonnell, The Wagner Housing Act, 120, 176; William Green as quoted in McDonnell, The Wagner Housing Act, 176; Senator Wagner as quoted in Lawrence M. Friedman, Government and Slum Housing (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 104; M. S. Eccles, “Homes Needed,” American Federationist 44 (August 1937): 811–12; Federal Works Agency and U.S. Housing Authority, “By and For Labor,” Public Housing 3 (December 1941), 1. 6. Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981); Eugenie Ladner Birch, “Woman-Made America: The Case of Early Public Housing Policy,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 44 (1978): 131; Langdon Post, The Challenge of Housing (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1938), 15.

216

Notes to Chapter 1

7. Eugenie Ladner Birch, “Edith Elmer Wood and the Genesis of Liberal Housing Thought, 1910–1942” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1976); Susan Cole, “Catherine Bauer and the Public Housing Movement, 1926–1937” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1975); Edith Elmer Wood, Housing Progress in Western Europe (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1923); Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing (Boston and New York: Houghton MifXin, 1934). 8. McDonnell, The Wagner Housing Act, 62; Post, The Challenge of Housing, 289. 9. McDonnell, The Wagner Housing Act; Housing Act of 1937, 75th Cong., 1st sess., ch. 896 (September 1, 1937), U.S. Statutes at Large 50:888–99; “Legislative History of Public Housing Traced through 25 Years,” Journal of Housing 19 (October 15, 1962): 436. 10. Catherine Bauer, “Now, at Last: Housing: The Meaning of the Wagner-Steagall Act,” New Republic 92 (September 8, 1937): 119–21; D. Bradford Hunt, “What Went Wrong with Public Housing in Chicago? A History of the Chicago Housing Authority, 1933–1982” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 2000), 23. (Hunt’s Wrst chapter is an insightful legislative history of the 1937 Housing Act.) 11. “Liberals Tackle Housing Problem,” Epic News, July 19, 1937, 1; “Will Go to Sacramento and Urge Governor to Include Housing Act in Session,” Los Angeles Citizen, January 7, 1938, 1; An Act to Provide Tax Exemption of Housing Authorities, extra sess. of the 52nd Legislature, ch. 1 (March 21, 1938), Statutes of California, 1–2; Housing Cooperation Law, ch. 2, extra sess. of the 52nd Legislature, ch. 1 (March 21, 1938), Statutes of California, 2–6; An Act to Provide for Rights of Eminent Domain, ch. 3, extra sess. of the 52nd Legislature, ch. 1 (March 21, 1938), Statutes of California, 6–9; Housing Authorities Law, ch. 4, extra sess. of the 52nd Legislature, ch. 1 (March 21, 1938), Statutes of California, 9–23; The Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles v. Isidore B. Dockweiler, 14 C(2d) 437 (1939). 12. Lawrence Leader, “Los Angeles and the Great Depression” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1972), 13–14, 183; Esther McCoy, “Slums Are Cancer Spots,” United Progressive News, October 25, 1937; Los Angeles County Coordinating Council, Poor Housing in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area: A Report Covering Certain Economic, Health, Crime, Relief, and Delinquency Conditions in Areas of Poor Housing in the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Works Progress Administration, March 1938). 13. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939 (Los Angeles, 1939), 4; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Third Annual Report, July 1, 1940–June 30, 1941 (Los Angeles, 1941), n.p.; Apartment Association of Los Angeles County, “Report on

Notes to Chapter 1

217

Proposed Federal Low-Cost Housing Projects for Los Angeles” (April 11, 1935), Council File 1093 (1935) (Files of the Los Angeles City Council, Los Angeles City Archives, Los Angeles); Harold H. Story, “Memoirs of Harold H. Story,” 1967, transcript (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 801–2. 14. All quoted in “Federation Opens Fight,” Epic News, July 5, 1937, 3. 15. Story oral history transcript, 800–804; Mayor Frank Shaw to City Council, March 22, 1938, Council File 1241 (1938); “On Housing Hearing,” California Eagle, June 2, 1938, 5A; “Unionist Named by Mayor to City Housing Authority,” Los Angeles Citizen, June 16, 1938, 5. For popular perspectives advocating the establishment of the CHA, see the letters in Council File 2263 (1938); for those opposing the CHA’s establishment, see the letters in Council File 2242 (1938). 16. Shaw to City Clerk, July 6, 1938, Council File 1241 (1938); Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Report on the Dwelling and Low-Income Housing Survey, City of Los Angeles, Projects L-11278 and L-11524 (Los Angeles, May 15, 1940), 1:7–8; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939, 7–9; “Scramble for Housing Posts Starts in L.A.,” People’s World, July 9, 1938, 2. 17. “Housing Director Arrives in L.A. for $30,000,000 Slum Clearance Survey,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 2, 1938, 3; “Housing Chief Arrives in L.A.,” Hollywood Citizen-News, August 1, 1938, 3; Wm. A. G. Foder, “50 Million Housing Fund Awaits Action of Cities,” People’s World, August 3, 1938, 2. 18. Thomas Joseph Sitton, “Urban Politics and Reform in New Deal Los Angeles: The Recall of Mayor Frank L. Shaw” (PhD diss., University of California at Riverside, 1983); Tom Sitton, “Another Generation of Urban Reformers: Los Angeles in the 1930s,” Western Historical Quarterly, July 1987: 315–32; Fred W. Viehe, “The Recall of Mayor Frank L. Shaw: A Revision,” California History 59, no. 4 (Winter 1980–81): 290–305; McCoy, “Slums Are Cancer Spots.” 19. Paul Cline, “The Los Angeles Mayoralty Recall Election,” Communist 17 (November 1938): 1019–27; 1938 Fletcher Bowron campaign broadside, Fletcher Bowron Collection, (Huntington Library, San Marino, California), Box 4. 20. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939, 12; “Bowron Seeks to Void Housing Bd. Appointments,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, October 12, 1938, A3, A6; Giulii quoted in “Housing Group Resignations Refused, Says Chairman,” Los Angeles Times, January 5, 1939, pt. 2, p. 3; “Bowron Quiet on Housing,” People’s World, January 6, 1939, 2. 21. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939, 9–11; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Report on

218

Notes to Chapter 1

the Dwelling and Low-Income Housing Survey, 1:8–9; “Slum Clearance Here Probable,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1938, pt. 1, p. 5. 22. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939, 13; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Report on the Dwelling and Low-Income Housing Survey, 1:9. 23. C. H. Fennell to City Council, October 20, 1938, Council File 4346 (1938); radio broadcast by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, KFWB, November 17, 1938, Fletcher Bowron Collection. 24. “Housing Report Will Be Asked,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1938, pt. 2, p. 2; “L.A. Warned It Faces Loss of U.S. Funds,” People’s World, December 1, 1938, 1; Mrs. Willita H. Wolf to City Council, December 6, 1938, Council File 4346 (1938); Van Wolf to City Council, December 5, 1938, Council File 4346 (1938). 25. Mellier G. Scott Jr., “Fletcher Bowron of Los Angeles: An Achievement of the People,” unpublished paper (Los Angeles, c. 1939), 17; “Bowron Favors L.A. Housing,” People’s World, December 8, 1938, 1; Chesebro to City Council, “Re: Cooperation Agreement with City Housing Authority,” December 15, 1938, Council File 4346 (1938); radio broadcast by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, KEHE, December 20, 1938, Fletcher Bowron Collection; “Bowron Urges Speed On Housing,” People’s World, January 27, 1939, 1. 26. “L.A. Council Kills Slum Survey,” People’s World, January 26, 1939, 1; City Clerk to City Council, February 15, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); “L.A. Council Finally Okehs Slum Survey,” People’s World, February 16, 1939, 1; “L.A. Slum Clearance Action Begins,” Los Angeles Daily News, February 16, 1939, 10; survey source is Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Report on the Dwelling and Low-Income Housing Survey, 1:80. 27. Louis Seligman, “L.A. Councilman Slum ProWteer,” People’s World, January 20, 1939, 1, 6; Lou Seligman, “Housing Program Tops Election Platform of Liberal Candidate,” People’s World, March 28, 1939, 2; “L.A. Councilman Gets Police to Grab Slum Expose LeaXets,” People’s World, April 3, 1939, 1. 28. “Mayor Has Majority in Council,” People’s World, May 4, 1939, 1. 29. City Clerk to City Council, March 2, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); Ordinance 80,995; “Housing Plan Approved,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 10, 1939, 18; “Housing Project Starts in L.A.,” People’s World, March 13, 1939, 3. 30. “Bowron to Speed L.A. Housing,” People’s World, May 26, 1939, 1; Lewis quoted in “Action on L.A. Slums Is Delayed,” People’s World, July 14, 1939, 1, 6; Rasmussen quoted in “L.A. City Council Urges $800,000,000 Housing Fund,” People’s World, August 3, 1939, 2. 31. Post on “Buckingham Palace” quoted in “L.A. Housing Critics Stir Hot Protests,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 14, 1939; Post on “lousy” slums quoted in “Worst in America, Experts Say,” People’s World, June 15, 1939,

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2; “L.A. vs. N.Y. Slums Touches Off Debate,” People’s World, August 28, 1939, 3; “Two Debate on Housing,” Los Angeles Examiner, August 31, 1939. 32. Lewis quoted in “L.A. Council Again Stalls Housing Work,” People’s World, September 16, 1939, 1; “Council Votes L.A. Housing Support,” Los Angeles Daily News, September 28, 1939, 7; “L.A. Council Okehs Housing,” People’s World, September 28, 1939, 1; “Council Votes to Wipe Out City’s Slums,” Los Angeles Examiner, September 28, 1939, sec. 1, p. 17; Council File 3174 (1939); “Slum-Clearance Work Here Assailed as Promotional,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1939, pt. 2, p. 2; “A Housing Contrast,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1939, pt. 2, p. 4. 33. Council File 3344 (1939); Ordinance 82,104 for West Los Angeles; Ordinance 82,103 for Central Avenue; Ordinance 82,102 for San Pedro; Rasmussen quoted in “City Council Approves Three New Public Housing Projects for L.A.,” Los Angeles Daily News, December 15, 1939, 16; “City Council Votes ‘Yes’ on Slum Clearance Plan,” Los Angeles Citizen, December 22, 1939, 5. 34. Wilson quoted in “Slum-Clearance Projects Defeated in City Council,” Los Angeles Times, February 29, 1940, pt. 2, p. 8; “L.A. Housing Project up in Council,” People’s World, March 7, 1940, 2. 35. Fennell to City Council, April 12, 1940, Council File 1274 (1940); Public Health and Welfare Committee to CHA, April 22, 1940, Council File 1274 (1940); “Utah Street Project Is Approved in Reversal of City Council Action,” Los Angeles Citizen, April 26, 1940, 3; “L.A. Council Okehs Utah St. Federal Homes,” People’s World, May 10, 1940, 1; “City Council Finally Approves Utah Street Low Cost Home Project,” Los Angeles Citizen, May 17, 1940, 2; Ordinance 82,925. 36. U.S. Work Projects Administration, A. E. Williamson, survey supervisor, Housing Survey Covering Portions of the City of Los Angeles, California, 3 vols., Project No. 65-1-07-70 (Los Angeles: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, April 1940) (volume 1 contains methodology, history, summary Wndings, deWnitions; volume 2 contains statistical tables and charts; volume 3 contains maps); U.S. Work Projects Administration, Housing Survey, City of Los Angeles, California, a digest of a report of the Work Projects Administration Project No. 65-1-07-70 (Los Angeles: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, April 1940), 1; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Progress: The Second Annual Report, July 1, 1939–June 30, 1940 (Los Angeles, 1940), 6. A dwelling was classiWed as physically substandard if it had one or more of the following deWciencies: it was in need of major structural repair, there was no private bath, there was no private Xush toilet, there was no running water, or the dwelling was not equipped for gas or electricity. A dwelling was classiWed as occupancy substandard if there were more than 1.5 persons per room or if it contained more than one family.

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37. Public Health and Welfare Committee to City Clerk, August 2, 1940, Council File 3024 (1940). 38. Nathan Straus, “From the Administrator,” Public Housing 2 (September 3, 1940): 2. 39. Gene Boyd, “$4,5000,000 in Wages Jeopardized by City Council Delay,” Los Angeles Citizen, November 1, 1940, 8; “L.A. Council Stall Perils Housing,” People’s World, November 2, 1940, 3; Post quoted in “Coast Housing Head Studies L.A. Snarl,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 7, 1940, 3. 40. “Housing Projects Approval Sought,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1940, pt. 1, p. 12; “Leaders Band to Save Federal Cash for L.A.,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 5, 1940, 1; “Citizens’ Group Rallies to Save L.A. Housing Fund,” People’s World, November 6, 1940, 3. 41. “City Council Passes More Housing Units,” Los Angeles Citizen, October 11, 1940, 8; “2 Big L.A. Housing Projects Approved at Hot Council Meet,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 8, 1940, 2; “2 L.A. Housing Projects Get Council Okeh,” People’s World, November 9, 1940, 1, 2; Lewis quoted in “Council Votes Slum Projects,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1940, pt. 2, p. 1; Council File 3024 (1940); Ordinance 83,700 for Hunter Street; Ordinance 83,701 for Mercury Avenue. 42. Rasmussen quoted in “City Council Gambles on Housing Fund,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 14, 1940, 3, 18; Report of Public Health and Welfare Committee to City Council, November 14, 1940, Council File 4487 (1940); “Council Vote May End Slum Projects Here,” Los Angeles Examiner, November 15, 1940, 18; “Housing Authority Arraigned; Council Refuses $6,000,000,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1940, pt. 2, p. 12; “Extension of Time Sought by Housing Head,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 16, 1940. 43. Post quoted in “L.A. Loses $6,800,000 Slum Fund,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 19, 1940, 6; “U.S. to Reclaim Part of L.A. Housing Fund,” People’s World, November 19, 1940, 3; “Over Million in U.S. Cash Lost to City,” Los Angeles Examiner, November 20, 1940; “City May Lose Housing Funds,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1940, pt. 2, p. 3; Resolution by the CHC, November 19, 1940, Council File 4627 (1940). 44. “Council Okehs 1 L.A. Project, Bans Another,” People’s World, December 13, 1940, 1; “One Housing Project Wins,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1940, pt. 1, p. 11; “Mead Slum Clearance Loses When Harby Gets His Back Up,” Los Angeles Daily News, undated clipping found in Roger Johnson Collection (Huntington Library, San Marino, California), Box 1; “Ann St. Housing Project Again Debated by Council,” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1940, pt. 1, p. 8; Roger Johnson to Langdon Post, December 12, 1940, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder:

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Correspondence 1942–45; “L.A. Council to Reconsider Mead Housing Project,” People’s World, December 14, 1940, 3. 45. City Clerk to City Attorney, January 6, 1941, Council File 4800 (1940); “Council Yields on Housing Plan; Orders Draft on Agreement,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 1941, pt. 2, p. 2; “Clearance in Slum Area Authorized,” Los Angeles Examiner, January 23, 1941, 17; quotation is from “Council Approves Agreement for Watts Housing Project,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1941, pt. 2, p. 10; Gene Boyd, “City Council Gives ‘Okeh’ to Slum-Clearance Program,” Los Angeles Citizen, January 24, 1941, 4. 46. “Address by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Station KECA,” February 6, 1941, Fletcher Bowron Collection; Robert E. Alexander, “Architecture, Planning, and Social Responsibility,” transcript of interview by Marlene Laskey, 1989 (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 555; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Third Annual Report, July 1, 1940–June 30, 1941 (Los Angeles, 1941), n.p. 47. “Action on Housing Delayed by Property Owners Protests,” Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1941, pt. 1, p. 13; “Council Gives Approval to Slum Projects,” Los Angeles Examiner, March 28, 1941; “Housing: L.A. Advocates Win 3 Victories,” People’s World, March 29, 1941, 3; “Ordinances Passed by City Council for Two More Low-Cost Housing Projects,” Los Angeles Citizen, April 4, 1941, 3; Council File 6135; Ordinance 84,450 for Avalon Gardens; Ordinance 84,451 for West LA Project; Ordinance 84,537. 48. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, The Truth about Low-Rent Public Housing in Los Angeles, leaXet (Los Angeles), n.d.; “Council Backs Ann Street Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Daily News, February 29, 1940, 6; City Council Minutes, March 5, 1940, Council File 3344 (1938); “L.A. Housing Project up in Council,” People’s World, March 7, 1940, 2; Eugene V. Boyd, “Must Save L.A. Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Citizen, March 15, 1940, 1, 7; Frank Wilkinson, “In Defense of Public Housing: Redbaiting Your Friends,” speech given at UCLA’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, November 5, 1981, taped copy in possession of Don Parson; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Progress: The Second Annual Report, 21. 49. Holtzendorff to City Council, March 5, 1941, Council File 3344 (1938); “Council Gives Approval to Slum Projects,” Los Angeles Examiner, March 28, 1941; “Council Acts on Housing,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1941, pt. 2, p. 12; “Housing: L.A. Advocates Win 3 Victories,” People’s World, March 29, 1941, 3; “Ordinances Passed by City Council for Two More Low-Cost Housing Projects,” Los Angeles Citizen, April 4, 1941, 3; Council Files 6494 and 6495 are petitions for and against the Sepulveda Project.

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50. City Clerk to CHA, May 16, 1941, Council File 7295; Holtzendorff to City Council, May 20, 1941, Council File 7295; Ordinance 84,941; “L.A. Fickett Hollow Project Is Approved,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, June 3, 1941, A3; Holtzendorff to City Council, July 24, 1941, Council File 7295. 51. United Progressive News, 101 Votes: An Analysis of the 1939–41 Los Angeles City Council (Los Angeles, 1941), 31, 36; “Housing Battle up Again Today,” People’s World, November 8, 1940, 3; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Progress: The Second Annual Report, 20; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Third Annual Report, n.p. 52. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report—June 30, 1939, 15; Walter Wright Alley, “A Program for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles” (September 25, 1939), Council File 3174 (1939); “Council Votes L.A. Housing Support,” Los Angeles Daily News, September 28, 1939, 7; “City Council Endorses Slum Clearance Program,” Los Angeles Citizen, September 29, 1939, 4; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Progress: The Second Annual Report, 20. 53. “L.A. Housing,” People’s World, September 6, 1941, 3. 54. “Defence Workers Get Priority at Housing Projects,” Los Angeles Daily News, October 11, 1941, 3; “Ceremonias en E. Los Angeles,” La Opinión, December 6, 1941, 8; “Housing Project Ceremony Set,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1941, pt. 2, p. 6. 55. “‘Defense’ Perils L.A. Housing Plans,” People’s World, June 29, 1940, 3. 56. Richard Baisden, “Labor Unions in Los Angeles Politics” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1958), 305. 57. The proposed wording for the May 2 ballot was “Shall the Mayor and Council of the City of Los Angeles continue to make appropriations of money to the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles as a gift or loan or otherwise obligate the City under the Housing Cooperation Law of the State of California for the purpose of encouraging and assisting said Authority in its program of slum clearance and the building of low-rent housing facilities?” City Clerk to City Council, March 27, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); resolution adopted by the Special Charter Amendment Committee, March 27, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); resolution adopted by the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, March 31, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); resolution adopted by the Workers Alliance, April 5, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); C. J. Haggerty to City Council, April 5, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); City Council Minutes, April 10, 1939, Council File 4346 (1938); “L.A. Council Faces Protest on Slum Stall,” People’s World, April 7, 1939, 1; “Housing Issue off L.A. Ballot,” People’s World, April 11, 1939, 1; “Heeded the Plea of Union Labor,” Los Angeles Citizen, April 14, 1939, 1, 4.

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58. Michael E. Engh, S.J., “Meeting the Needs of Our Time”: Builders of the Humane City in Los Angeles, 1900–1950 (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 2001); “Group Seeks Slums Action,” Los Angeles Examiner, August 27, 1937; “Housing Group Picks OfWcers,” Los Angeles Times October 30, 1938, pt. 2, p. 7. 59. Interview of Frank Wilkinson by Don Parson and Laura Chase, Los Angeles, December 8, 1981; interview of Frank Wilkinson by Don Parson, Los Angeles, June 26, 1996; Mel Scott to John Anson Ford, May 6, 1940, John Anson Ford Collection (Huntington Library, San Marino, California), Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder bb; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Progress: The Second Annual Report, 18. 60. Frank Wilkinson, “In Defense of Public Housing”; GrifWn Fariello, ed., Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 529–30; Paul Michael Neuman, “America’s Most Hounded,” Los Angeles Downtown News, March 29, 1993, 1, 8, 10, 11. 61. Interview of Roger C. Johnson by Don Parson, Hollywood, California, May 10, 1982. 62. “Leaders Band to Save Federal Cash for L.A.,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 5, 1940, 1; “Los Angeles Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing and Planning,” Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1; Johnson interview, May 10, 1982. 63. “Better Housing Interest Is High as Many at Confab,” California Eagle, July 21, 1938, 9A; “Negro Woman Choice for L.A. Housing Authority,” People’s World, June 22, 1939, 1; “Bowron Acts to Aid Negroes,” People’s World, June 23, 1939, 2. 64. “L.A. Negroes to Push Slum War,” People’s World, August 3, 1939, 2; “‘Housing Project’ Theme of Mass Meet Sunday,” California Eagle, August 10, 1939, 3A; Terry quoted in “Housing Project for Negroes,” People’s World, October 14, 1939, 1. 65. Natalia Molina, “Contested Bodies and Cultures: The Politics of Public Health and Race within Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese Communities in Los Angeles, 1879–1939” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2000), 199–205; “Mexican Body Starts L.A. Housing Drive,” People’s World, January 9, 1939, 3; Ramón Welch to City Council, January 9, 1939, Council File 1070 (1939) (many thanks to Natalia Molina for this reference); “El comité estatal permanente del congreso mexicano tuvo junta el 18 del presente,” La Opinión, January 22, 1939, 3. 66. “Se inician las obras de un proyecto por casas baratas,” La Opinión, March 15, 1940, 5; “Es aprobado nuevo proyecto de casas baratas,” La Opinión, April 12, 1940, 5, 6; “Más de diez mil personas han pasado ya por Ramona Gardens,” La Opinión, December 6, 1940, 5, 6; “Está listo ya el barrio de casas baratas,” La Opinión, February 21, 1941, 5, 8; Mario T. García, Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert

224

Notes to Chapter 2

Corona (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 70–71. 67. “Paint Styling Gives Glamour to Buildings in Ramona Gardens Low-Rent Housing Project,” Southwest Builder and Contractor 97 (February 21, 1941): 8–11; Eugene Weston Jr., “Ramona Gardens Housing Project,” California Arts and Architecture 57 (December 1940): 34–35. 68. “Housing Unit Gets Tenant,” Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1941, pt. 1, p. 11; “Boy, 3, First ‘at Home’ in City’s Ramona Gardens,” Los Angeles Daily News, January 3, 1941, 15. 69. “ArtiWcial Boundaries Only Enclose Ramona,” Los Angeles Daily News, February 22, 1941, 8; “Ramona Gardens, Low-Rent Housing Project, Dedicated,” Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1941, pt. 1, p. 1; “Ramona Gardens Project Dedicated,” Los Angeles Daily News, February 24, 1941, 8. 70. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Handbook of Information for Resident Families and on Regulations Governing the Conditions of Occupancy at Ramona Gardens (Los Angeles, December, 1940), preface, 11. The source of the quotation is Post, The Challenge of Housing, 221. 71. “‘Well Baby Conference’ Plan Extended by City to Ramona Gardens Project,” Los Angeles Daily News, October 9, 1941, 3; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Third Annual Report, n.p. 72. Noel Cobb, “L.A. Housing: Kid’s Swings Aren’t Enough.” People’s World, September 16, 1941, 3. 73. Post is quoted in “BeneWts to All Pointed Out through Federal Low-Cost Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Citizen, January 6, 1939, 1, 4; Federal Works Agency and U.S. Housing Agency, “Four Years of Achievement, 1937–1941,” Public Housing 3 (October 1941): 1. 2. Homes for Heroes 1. Martin J. Schiesl, “City Planning and the Federal Government in World War II: The Los Angeles Experience,” California History 59, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 126–43; “War Housing: City Housing Authority Completes Mammoth Plan” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1942, pt. 1, pp. 15–20. 2. Philip J. Funigiello, The Challenge to Urban Liberalism: Federal-City Relations during World War II (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), 158. 3. Arthur C. Verge, Paradise Transformed: Los Angeles during the Second World War (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1993), 4–6, 145; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Special Census of Los Angeles, California, Population by Age, Race, and Sex, by Census Tract: January 28, 1946, Series P-SC, No. 186 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OfWce, October 29, 1946); Bowron quoted in Homes for Heroes,

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4th annual report (Los Angeles: Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 1942), n.p. 4. Mark Keats, “Ear to the Ground,” Sport Page, April 15, 1944, 2, clipping found in the Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Aliso Village—Printed Material, 1942–45. 5. Community Facilities Act, 76th Cong., 3rd sess., ch. 862 (October 14, 1940), U.S. Statutes at Large 54:1125–1128; “Public Housing Goes to War,” Public Housing 3, no. 6 (April 1942), n.p.; “The Story of World War II Housing from Construction to Disposition, 1940–1955,” Journal of Housing 12 (May 1955): 152–59; “Legislative History of Public Housing Traced through 25 Years,” Journal of Housing 19 (October 15, 1962): 439–40. 6. Nicola Giulii, “The Present and Post-Victory Aims and Objectives of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles,” November 28, 1944, Council File 18,745. 7. Homes for Heroes, n.p. 8. Johnson interview, May 10, 1982; Joseph Weckler, 1946, “Hollenbeck,” 43, 44, Eshref Shevky Collection (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 8, Folder: American Council on Race Relations/Los Angeles Neighborhood Study (thanks to Mike Willard for this reference). 9. Johnson interview, May 10, 1982; Joseph Weckler, 1946, “Hollenbeck,” 44; “Performance Rating of Roger Johnson,” from Raymond Nelson to Howard Holtzendorff, January 17, 1945, in the Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Correspondence 1942–45. 10. Frank Wilkinson, “In Defense of Public Housing: Redbaiting Your Friends,” speech given at UCLA’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, November 5, 1981, taped copy in possession of Don Parson. 11. “Housing Cracks,” People’s World, December 23, 1944, 3; Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996. 12. Interview of Drayton Bryant by Don Parson, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 20, 1982. 13. Interview of Sidney Green by Don Parson, Van Nuys, California, July 8, 1982. 14. Interview of Oliver Haskell by Don Parson, Venice, California, October 3, 1982. Haskell was referring to Langdon W. Post, The Challenge of Housing (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1938). 15. Koseki family to Miss Cummings, August 19, 1942, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Pico Gardens—Aliso Village—Ramona Gardens; Henry Kraus, In the City Was a Garden: A Housing Project Chronicle (New York: Renaissance Press, 1951), 141. 16. “Housing Unit Council Aids Community,” People’s World, January 24, 1944, 3; Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 90.

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17. Johnson interview, May 10, 1982; quotation about PTA from Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 40; “L.A. Needs More Child Centers,” People’s World, December 11, 1943, 4; “The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles Presents a Solution,” California Arts and Architecture 60 (May 1943): [47–66]; Iona Lish to Miss Clark, August 3, 1944, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Correspondence 1942–45. 18. Krimm quoted in “Army Asks More Child Care Centers in Los Angeles,” People’s World, October 18, 1943, 4; “Child Care Problems Mount,” People’s World, April 6, 1945, 3; CHA quoted in Homes for Heroes, n.p. 19. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Handbook of Information and Suggestions for the Residents of Pueblo del Rio (Los Angeles, 1942), 18, 13; “Mrs. Terry Reports on Public Housing at Del Rio Fete,” California Eagle, June 18, 1942, 8B. 20. Banning Homes–Channel Heights Pre-Paid Medical Plan,” no date, in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection (Urban Archives, California State University at Northridge), Record Group 1 (Phil Connelly Records), Box 9, Folder 2; “Doctors Move to Ease Health Crisis,” People’s World, January 24, 1944, 3; “Doctors Shifting on CPS!” People’s World, May 5, 1944, 1; interview of Wilbur Gordon by Don Parson, Los Angeles, September 28, 1982. 21. Wilbur Gordon interview, September 28, 1982. 22. J. Alexander Somerville, “Deplores Housing Restrictions Now Prevailing in Los Angeles,” letter to the editor, California Eagle, November 30, 1944, 7. 23. Luis Leobardo Arroyo, “Chicano Participation in Organized Labor: The CIO in Los Angeles,” Atzlán 6, no. 2 (1978), 294; “Viviendas para Mexicanos en la ciudad,” La Opinión, August, 26, 1942, 8. 24. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Special Census of Los Angeles, California, Population; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Preliminary Report on the Disposition of Public War Housing in Los Angeles (Los Angeles, September 27, 1945), 4; Dorothy W. Baruch, “Sleep Comes Hard: Negro Housing in Los Angeles,” Nation 160 (January 27, 1945): 195–96; Charlotta Bass, Forty Years: Memoirs from the Pages of a Newspaper (Los Angeles: California Eagle, 1960), 107. 25. José Ruíz Velis, “El ‘Pequeño Tokio’ ha muerto,” La Opinión, April 19, 1942, 2; “Little Tokyo Action Sought by War Council,” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1943, pt. 2, p. 1; Kango Kunitsugo, transcript of interview by Dave Biniasz, November 28, 1973 (California State University, Fullerton, Oral History Program, Japanese American Project), 4. 26. CHA press release, “Little Tokyo Cleanup Drive Launched,” May 25, 1944, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Citizens Committee for Better Housing, 1940–45; CHA Press release, “Little Tokyo Evacuees

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Offered Homes,” May 26, 1944, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Citizens Committee for Better Housing, 1940–45; “Behind ‘Little Tokyo’ Evictions,” People’s World, June 15, 1944, 4; “400 New Housing Units Dedicated on Last Sunday,” California Eagle, June 1, 1944, 1; resolution by Councilman Lloyd Davies, November 24, 1944, Council File 18,544. 27. Arthur F. Miley to John Anson Ford, “Re: Housing Conference in Mayor’s OfWce,” August 10, 1943, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder aa (7); Holtzendorff quoted in “Mayor’s Meet Urges More U.S. Housing; GrifWth Hits Race Bars,” California Eagle, August 12, 1943, 1A, 8B. 28. “You and Yours Are Vitally Affected by the National Housing Project for Negroes in Your Neighborhood,” copy of undated broadside, in Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection, Record Group 1 (Phil Connelly Records), Box 31, Folder 42; K. M. Eram to City Council, October 25, 1943, Council File 16,009; Mrs. Maude Rittmaster to City Council, October 23, 1943, Council File 16,009; M. E. Diebold to City Council, October 20, 1943, Council File 16,009; Mrs. Albert Ralphs Jr. to City Council, no date, Council File 16,009; Katherine de Wille Quinn to City Council, no date, Council File 16,009. 29. “L.A. Housing Authority Bans Jim Crow,” People’s World, November 10, 1943, 1; Culver City attorney quoted in “‘Halt Negroes’ Is City’s Reply to Manpower Crisis,” People’s World, November 12, 1943, 1, 3; “No Bars in Venice Project!” California Eagle, November 11, 1943, 1A, 3A; “Communiques from the Housing Front,” California Eagle, November 18, 1943, 1A, 2A. “Residents of Aliso Village Score Racism,” Eastside Journal, December 1, 1943, 8. The letter was also reprinted in the California Eagle, December 2, 1943, “An Open Letter to Culver City Mayor,” 1A. 30. “Housing Is Halted after Klan Activity,” People’s World, November 9, 1943), 3; “L.A. Halts Venice Housing Plan,” People’s World, November 18, 1943, 3; “Housing Foes Use Hitler Race Theory,” Labor Herald, November 19, 1943, 2. 31. DeHogue and Carrol quoted in “Ask City Council to Bar Negro Housing,” California Eagle, October 28, 1943, 1A, 2A; Bass, Forty Years, 108. 32. “Council Kills Race Unity Move,” California Eagle, November 18, 1943, 1A, 11; Hollywood Women’s Council to City Council, November 29, 1943, Council File 16,278; City Council Minutes, December 15, 1943, Council File 16,278; Ed Robbin, “L.A. Council Votes Down Race Unity,” People’s World, December 17, 1943, 1; Harlan Dale Unrau, “The Double V Movement in Los Angeles during the Second World War: A Study in Negro Protest” (MA thesis, California State College, Fullerton, 1971), 44–45. 33. “L.A.’s Fight to End Racism,” People’s World, November 3, 1943, 3. 34. Testimony of Orville Caldwell, U.S. Congress, House Committee on

228

Notes to Chapter 2

Naval Affairs, Investigation of Congested Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OfWce, 1943), 1764, 1766; “Mayor’s Idea: Stop the War Awhile,” California Eagle, November 18, 1943, 8. 35. Quotation from “‘Ghettos Must Go!’” People’s World, July 3, 1944, 4; “Housing Parley Scores Racial Restrictions,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1945, pt. 2, p. 5; “L.A. Hits Segregation,” People’s World, February 27, 1945, 1. The addresses of Howard Holtzendorff and Mayor Bowron at the 1945 conference were published in the semimonthly periodical Now in “The Housing Crisis in Los Angeles,” Now, 2nd half March 1945, 4–5, 13. Holtzendorff’s address was also published, in two parts, by the Los Angeles Citizen: “Housing Authority Director Says L.A. Is Facing Crisis Unequaled by Any Other City,” March 2, 1945, 4, and “Housing Authority Director Makes Recommendations to Meet Present, Future Needs,” March 9, 1945, 4. 36. Bryant interview, August 20, 1982; Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 89. 37. “Fuss Hits Housing Jim Crow as Threat to Victory Effort,” Labor Herald, November 19, 1943, 4; Testimony of Oscar Fuss, November 11, 1943, House Committee on Naval Affairs, Investigation of Congested Areas, 1859, 1860; George Weaver to Phil Connelly, April 17, 1945, in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection, Record Group 1 (Phil Connelly Records), Box 9, Folder 6. 38. Testimony of Clement Markert, November 12, 1943, House Committee on Naval Affairs, Investigation of Congested Areas, 1970; Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 69. 39. Arthur F. Miley to John Anson Ford, “Re: Housing Conference in Mayor’s OfWce,” August 10, 1943, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder aa (7); Dominic Capeci Jr., Race Relations in Wartime Detroit: The Sojourner Truth Housing Controversy of 1942 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 75; “Housing Horse-Play Must Stop!” California Eagle, August 26, 1943, 8A. 40. California Legislature, Joint Senate-Assembly Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, Second Report (Sacramento, 1945), 160; Roger Johnson, “Statement on Zoot Suit Riot,” Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1; “Zoot Issue Discussed in News’ Court,” Los Angeles Daily News, December 6, 1943; Johnson interview, May 10, 1982. 41. Carey McWilliams, “Zoot-Suit Riots,” New Republic 108 (June 21, 1943): 818–20; Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, Second Report, 194; Johnson, O’Dwyer, McWilliams, Martin, Haggerty, and Magnin to John Blanford (National Housing Agency), August 25, 1943, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Cit Comm for Better Housing Los Angeles Citizens’ Committee. 42. Nathaniel S. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930 (New York: Universe Books, 1973), 48.

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43. John F. Bauman, “Visions of a Post-War City: A Perspective on Urban Planning in Philadelphia and the Nation, 1942–1945,” in Introduction to Planning History in the United States, ed. Donald A. Krueckenberg (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1983), 176. 44. “AFL Will Present National Housing Program for U.S.,” Los Angeles Citizen, February 16, 1945, 1; “CIO Housing Plan,” People’s World, July 26, 1945, 4; CIO National Political Action Committee, The People’s Program for 1944 (New York: CIO-PAC, 1944); quotation is from CIO Department of Research and Education, Good Shelter for Everyone (CIO, 1943), 2; UAW-CIO, Homes for Workers in Planned Communities through Collective Action (Detroit: UAW-CIO, 1944). 45. Gerholz quoted in “Housing Boom Due—But How?” People’s World, February 12, 1944, 3; Bauman, “Visions of a Post-War City,” 181–84. 46. Lindsey quoted in “Housing Unit Council Aids Community,” People’s World, January 24, 1944, 3; Charlotte Ingram to Roger Johnson, June 10, 1944, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Correspondence 1942–45. 47. “AFL, CIO Leaders Take a Squint at Postwar America,” People’s World, February 4, 1944, 4; Priscilla Roberts and Hawley Jones, “Housekeeping after the War,” Harper’s Bazaar, April 1944, 430–37. 48. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, A Decent Home . . . an American Right, 5th, 6th, and 7th Consolidated Annual Report (Los Angeles, 1945), 26, 28, 40, 42; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, “Preliminary Report and Recommendations Concerning the Disposition of All Public War Housing in the City of Los Angeles,” September 27, 1945, 1; quotation is from “The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles Presents a Solution,” California Arts and Architecture 60 (May 1943): [47–66]. 49. Funigiello, The Challenge to Urban Liberalism, ch. 3; Mel Scott, American City Planning since 1880 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 394–95; Charles Abrams, The Future of Housing (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1946), 297–307; Helen Fuller, “The Invisible Congress III: The Real Estate Lobby,” New Republic 110, no. 14 (April 3, 1944): 463–66. 50. Johnson to Connelly, February 27, 1942, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Civilian Defense Housing Committee 1942–45. 51. James Thomas Keane, Fritz B. Burns and the Development of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 2001), 93–94, 98; Testimony of Charles L. Parr, November 10, 1943, House Committee on Naval Affairs, Investigation of Congested Areas, 1831–35. 52. “Text of Address Delivered by Frank Wilkinson . . . before the Committee of 1000 Veteran Home Buyers . . .” (8 pages), February 7, 1947, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 66, BIII, 14, e(7). 53. Mignon E. Rothstein, “A Study of the Growth of Negro Population in Los Angeles and Available Housing Facilities between 1940 and 1946”

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(MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1950), 81; Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 87; “Housing Horse-Play Must Stop!” 8A. 54. Bass, Forty Years, 127–28; “Lift Quota System off Housing,” California Eagle, July 22, 1943, 1A, 5B; “Housing Race Quotas Gotta Go—and Now!” California Eagle, August 26, 1943, 1A, 3B; “An Open Letter to the Los Angeles Housing Authority,” California Eagle, September 2, 1943, 8B; “Aliso Village Grows Up,” Now, 2nd half March 1945, 13, found in the Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Aliso Village— Printed Material 1942–45. 55. “Political Parties Discuss Minority Problems,” Now, 2nd half March 1945, 8, 12; Haskell interview, October 3, 1982; Wilkinson to Don Parson, June 8, 1994, in possession of the author. 56. Robert C. Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), 189; Rothstein, “A Study of the Growth of Negro Population in Los Angeles,” 102; Howard Holtzendorff, “The Housing Crisis in Los Angeles,” Now, 2nd half March 1945, 5; “Preliminary Report on the Disposition of Public War Housing . . . ,” 1; the table is from Rothstein, “A Study of the Growth of Negro Population in Los Angeles,” 77–78. 57. Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 255. 58. Oliver Carlson, Fletcher Bowron—He Didn’t Want to be Mayor! (Los Angeles: Spotlight Biographies, [1944]), 2. 59. “Bowron, Jessup Nail Down Planks,” People’s World, February 14, 1945, 4; Carl Winter, “The Los Angeles Mayoralty Election,” May 10, 1945, manuscript in the Bowron Collection, Box 40a. Winter’s article was also published in two parts in the California Eagle: May 24, 1945, 20, and May 31, 1945, 20; “Election Gives L.A. Best City Council in History,” Labor Herald, May 4, 1945, 1, 7. 60. A Decent Home . . . an American Right. The pages of this report were enlarged to thirty-foot-by-forty-foot panels and exhibited at the 1946 annual meeting of the NPHC in New York, where it “literally stole the show.” At the request of the CIO, the exhibit was loaned to the UAW for display at their concurrent convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. “L.A. Exhibit Steals Show As NPHC Convenes,” Los Angeles Housing News, April 1946, 1, 3, 5. 3. David and Goliath 1. Helen Fuller, “The Invisible Congress III: The Real Estate Lobby,” New Republic 110, no. 14 (April 3, 1944): 466. 2. Fletcher Bowron to F.D.R., March 5, 1945, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder bb(6); “Statement of Mayor Fletcher Bowron,” March 6, 1945, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder bb(6); “L.A. Housing Crisis; Plea To Roosevelt,” People’s World, March 7, 1945, 1; “Mayor Requests Negro Housing,” California Eagle,

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March 8, 1945, 2; “Broadcast by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Radio Station KFI,” November 1, 1945, 2, Fletcher Bowron Collection. 3. “Los Angeles Needs 280,000 New Homes,” People’s World, November 26, 1945, 3; “House Facilities in Southland Getting Worse,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1945, pt. 2, pp. 1, 3; Marty Jeezer, The Dark Ages: A History of the United States, 1945–1960 (Boston: South End Press, 1982), 177. 4. “L.A. Housing Conference,” People’s World, September 10, 1945, 1; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Preliminary Report on the Disposition of Public War Housing in Los Angeles (Los Angeles, September 27, 1945), 3, 4; Amendments to Community Facilities Act, 77th Cong., 1st sess., ch. 260 ( June 28, 1941), U.S. Statutes at Large, 55:363. 5. “Find Housing—for Japs,” Los Angeles Examiner, November 9, 1945, 1, 11; Douglas quoted in Ingrid Winther Scobie, Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas, A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 212; Charles B. Spaulding, “Housing Problems of Minority Groups in Los Angeles County,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 248 (November 1946): 224. 6. Marshall quoted in “OfWcial Apathy Perils Child Center,” People’s World, September 1, 1945, 3; “Delegation Visits Bowron to Protest Closing Down of Ramona Gardens Playground,” California Eagle, September 12, 1946, 1, 5; Lillian Gates, “The People Fight Back for Rents and Housing,” Political Affairs 26 (April 1947): 320. 7. “Five Hundred L.A. Families Evicted,” People’s World, October 26, 1945, 1; “Urges U.S. to Ship Idle Units Here,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 4, 1945, 1, 3; “Citizens Act on L.A. Housing Crisis,” People’s World, October 29, 1945, 1; Davenport quoted in “Citizens Facing Parkway Evictions Reported Planning City Hall March,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1945, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; “Must Put Housing before Speedways, Gus Hawkins Says,” California Eagle, March 20, 1947, 2; Scobie, Center Stage, 192. 8. “Citizens’ Housing Group Has Three-Point Plan,” Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1945, pt. 2, p. 10; Citizens Committee for Better Housing and Planning press release, November 19, 1945, Roger Johnson Collection, Box 1, Folder: Citizens Committee for Better Housing, 1940–45. 9. “L.A. Leaders Urge Bowron to Declare Housing Emergency,” People’s World, November 19, 1945, 1; “Es muy seria la situación creada por la falta de casas,” La Opinión, November 21, 1945, 8; “Housing Action Theme of Meet Here Saturday,” California Eagle, November 24, 1945, 1, 2; “L.A. Battles Housing ‘Disaster,’” People’s World, November 26, 1945, 1. 10. Mayor Bowron to City Council, December 7, 1945, Council File 21,653; “Fondos para proporcionar habitaciones a 360 familias,” La Opinión, December 8, 1945, 8; City Clerk to Mayor Bowron, December 10, 1945, Council File 21,653; “City Council Votes on Housing,” People’s

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World, December 10, 1945, 1; “Council Votes $100,000 for Housing Aid,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1945, pt. 1, pp. 1, 12. 11. “L.A. Attacks Housing Crisis,” People’s World, December 5, 1945, 3; CHC bylaws quoted in “Citizens Council Moves on 3 Fronts to Get Adequate Housing for Vets,” People’s World, January 26, 1946, 3. 12. “Mrs. Siegal Will Direct Housing Job,” Hollywood Citizen-News, December 12, 1946, 8; Miley to Ford, December 24, 1946, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, bb(7). 13. Douglas quoted in “Los Angeles Citizens Housing Council Conference on Housing, January 18, 1947,” in Civil Rights Congress Collection (Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles), Box 21, Folder 31; “Fifty Community Organizations Join Forces on Program to Untangle the Housing Snafu,” People’s World, January 20, 1947, 3. 14. “No Vacancies,” People’s World, October 8, 1945, 3; “Veteran and Family Set Up Pershing Square Tent Home,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1945, pt. 1, p. 1; “Veteran’s Tent Turns into Swank Hotel Suite,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1945, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2. 15. “A House for GI Joe,” Los Angeles Daily News, November 7, 1945; “The Housing Shortage Problem,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1945, pt. 2, p. 4; “Red Tape and Housing Shortage,” Los Angeles Examiner, November 12, 1945, 10. 16. Nathaniel S. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930 (New York: Universe Books, 1973), 59–60; “President Acts on Housing Here,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1946, pt. 1, p. 1; “Truman Plans 2,700,000 New Homes in Two Years,” Los Angeles Times, February 9, 1946, pt. 2, p. 1; “Mayor Calls for Mass Production of Housing,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 1946, pt. 2, pp. 1, 6; “Veterans Get Housing Aid,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1946, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2. 17. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans (Los Angeles, 1949), 3; “Housing Chief Asks $2½ Million for City,” People’s World, February 16, 1946), 3; “L.A. War Veteran’s Emergency Housing Waits on State O.K.,” Los Angeles Housing News, February 1946, 1–3. 18. “First 14 Families of Veterans Move into Apartments at Wilmington Hall,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1945, pt. 2, pp. 1, 6; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans, 13–15. 19. “City Attorney Rules Parks May Be Used for Housing,” Los Angeles Daily News, January 16, 1946, 3; “Housing Plan for Vets Told,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1946, pt. 2, p. 1; Van M. GrifWth v. City of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 511011 (1946); O’Dwyer to GrifWth, February 28, 1946, Van GrifWth Collection (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 24, f. 2; GrifWth

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v. City of Los Angeles, 78 C.A.2d 796; 178 P.2d 793 (1947); Van GrifWth, unprocessed oral history, 1967, transcript (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 235–36. 20. Jack Young, “Rodger Young,” People’s World, April 20, 1946, 3; “Rodger Young Village Dedication Ceremony Set for April 27th,” Los Angeles Housing News, April 1946, 1–2; “Hero Young’s Mother Speaks at Dedication of Village,” Los Angeles Examiner, April 28, 1946; “Es inaugarada nuevo colonia,” La Opinión, April 29, 1946, 2; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans, 4. 21. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans, 4–11; Mike Eberts, GrifWth Park: A Centennial History (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 1996), 245; Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), pt. 4; Dick Turpin, “Big Rodger Young Village Vanishing,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1954, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2. 22. “Veterans Win 100 Emergency Homes,” People’s World, March 15, 1946, 3; “Vet Housing Project Opens,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 11, 1946; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans, 12. 23. “Vets Housing Site Selected,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 17, 1946; “Veterans’ Housing Gets Another Boost Here,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1946, pt. 2, p. 4; “Council Grants $100,000 to Basilone Homes Project,” People’s World, June 21, 1946, 3; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cares for Its Veterans, 11–12; “140 Families Will Move to Vet Housing Monday,” Hollywood Citizen-News, December 14, 1946, 5; “Suit for U.S. Housing Funds May Be Filed,” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1946, pt. 2, p. 1; “Order Saves Vet Homes Project,” Los Angeles Examiner, December 27, 1946, sec. 1, p. 5; “4,500 Vet Homes Ordered Emptied,” People’s World, July 30, 1953, 3. 24. Richard O. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966), 57; Robert S. Allen and William V. Shannon, The Truman Merry-Go-Round (New York: Vanguard Press, 1950), 20; “A New Leaf in the Housing Book,” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1946, pt. 2, p. 4; “Houseless? Here’s Figures Will Make You Cozily Hot,” California Eagle, June 12, 1947. 25. See, for example, the content and tone of “Text of Address Delivered by Frank Wilkinson . . . before the Committee of 1000 Veteran Home Buyers . . .” (8 pages), February 7, 1947, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 66, BIII, 14, e(7); Henry Kraus, In the City Was a Garden: A Housing Project Chronicle (New York: Renaissance Press, 1951), 244–45. 26. Frank Gervasi, “Housing: The Homeless Southwest,” Collier’s, December 14, 1946, 22–23+; City Council quoted in “Council Approves Vets Housing Plan,” People’s World, September 12, 1946, 3; “Vet Housing

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Meeting,” People’s World, December 4, 1946, 4; “Vet Groups Press Fight on Non-Essential Building,” People’s World, January 8, 1947, 3. 27. All quotations are from “Vets Dramatize Home Lack by Camping Out in Park,” Los Angeles Daily News, January 11, 1947, 1, 6; “2000 Veterans Sleep in Park,” Los Angeles Examiner, January 11, 1947. 28. “Housing Campaign in High Gear,” People’s World, January 21, 1947, 3; “Conference Seeks End of Race Covenants, Segregated Living,” Los Angeles Sentinel, January 22, 1947, 1. 29. “State Housing Fight,” People’s World, March 10, 1947, 3; “Groups Here Push Plans for Housing Motorcade, March 23, 24,” California Eagle, March 13, 1947, 2; “Housing Caravan All Set to Move on Sacramento,” California Eagle, March 20, 1947, 1, 5; “Vets Demand State Action on Housing,” People’s World, March 25, 1947, 1. The Caravan Committee kept up its housing agitation after the Sacramento motorcade; Harper Poulson to City Council, May 16, 1947, Council File 28,502. 30. California State Reconstruction and Re-employment Commission, Postwar Housing in California (Sacramento, June 1945), 7–8; “Text of Address Delivered by Frank Wilkinson . . . before the Committee of 1000 Veteran Home Buyers . . .”; Carr quoted in “Mayor Cracks Down on Home Building OfWcials,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 5, 1947, 3. 31. “Mayor Cracks Down on Home Building OfWcials,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 5, 1947, 3. 32. Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Los Angeles Housing Needs, 1947–1948 (Los Angeles, October 30, 1947). 33. “Housing Body Meets Saturday,” California Eagle, December 4, 1947, 2; Los Angeles Citizens’ Housing Council Bulletin, December 6, 1947, in Civil Rights Congress Collection, Box 21, Folder 31; O’Dwyer to friends of CHC, December 12, 1947, in Civil Rights Congress Collection, Box 21, Folder 31; “Petition Campaign on Homes Planned,” People’s World, December 22, 1947, 4. 34. “Promise of Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 12, 1948, 7; “Action on Housing IntensiWes,” People’s World, March 1, 1948, 3; “A Chance for Homes,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 11, 1948, 7; “Form Advisory Committee for California Initiative,” California Eagle, March 25, 1948, 1; Virginia Gardner and Jack Young, “Initiative Petition Drive? Who Did What in Housing,” People’s World, May 12, 1948, 3. 35. California Housing Initiative Committee, Inc., “Outline of California Housing Initiative” (5 pages), September 30, 1948, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, Folder bb(9). 36. William B. Ross, interview by Enid H. Douglas, 1990 (Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program), 31; “Don’t Pay Somebody Else’s Rent” (“No on 14” Xyer), sent to me by Laura Chase from the John Ihlder Pamphlet

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Collection, Box 23, Folder: Housing–United States–California, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; interview of Harold Wise (state director of the Housing Initiative Committee) by Don Parson, Washington, D.C., August 26, 1982; Bryant interview, August 20, 1982. 37. Guy Havard Raner Jr., “Public Housing and Politics: An Inquiry into the Historical and Political Background of Public Housing and an Estimate of Its Future in the City of Los Angeles” (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1957), 196. 38. “Twelve Homes Projects Declared Open to Public,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 1947, pt. 2, p. 1; Kosloff quoted in “Tenants to Fight Evictions,” People’s World, April 30, 1947, 4; “Tenants Win ‘No Eviction’ Assurance,” People’s World, July 17, 1947, 3. 39. “Evictees Demanding Decent Housing to Replace Lost Homes,” California Eagle, April 7, 1949, 2; “Housing Assured Evictees,” People’s World, April 12, 1949, 2; “Bowron Committed to Aid Displaced 1st Street Tenants,” California Eagle, April 14, 1949, 3; Forrester quoted in “Little Tokio Tenants up in Arms,” People’s World, April 18, 1949, 3; “Civic Center Evictees BeneWted by Proposal Passed in City Council,” California Eagle, May 5, 1949, 5; “Housing Survey,” People’s World, June 6, 1949, 3. 40. “Civic Leaders, Club Women, Agree Slums Must Be Ousted,” Los Angeles Housing News, February 1949, 1–2; “Slums at Back Door of City Hall,” California Eagle, May 26, 1949, 1, 5; “Urban League Makes First Tour of City’s Blighted Slum Sections,” Los Angeles Sentinel, May 26, 1949, B1; Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996; Haskell interview, October 3, 1982. 41. Edward L. Barrett Jr., The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigations of Subversive Activities in California (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1951), 44, 352; Ingrid Winther Scobie, “Jack B. Tenney and the ‘Parasitic Menace’: Anti-Communist Legislation in California 1940–1949,” PaciWc Historical Review 43, no. 2 (May 1974): 188–211. “CUAC” refers to the three committees created consecutively by the California Legislature to investigate subversive activities: Assembly Relief Investigating Committee on Subversive Activities (the “little Dies” committee), Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, and Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities. 42. Sara Boynoff, “Tenney’s Theme Song Hits Sour Note as He Brands Housing Council ‘Red,’” Los Angeles Daily News, December 1, 1945, 1; editorial quoted from “Why Paint Housing Red?” Los Angeles Daily News, December 5, 1945; California Legislature, Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Fifth Report (Sacramento: California Senate, 1949), 697. 43. California Legislature, Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, Third Report (Sacramento: California Senate, 1947), “Communist Inspired March on the Capitol,” 242–44; Ruben W. Borough,

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“Reuben W. Borough and California Reform Movements,” 1964 interview by Elizabeth Dixon, transcript (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 388; Belton quoted in Jack Young, “Housing? Reds!” People’s World, November 20, 1948, 1, 3. 44. “Socialism and Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 20, 1947, 7; “Los Angeles Slums??” California Eagle, June 10, 1948, 6. 45. Smith is quoted in Nathaniel S. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930 (New York: 1973), 94; “Flash—NAREB Hunts Communists, Finds Senator Taft!!” Los Angeles Housing News, February 1947, 1, 3; Taft is quoted in Los Angeles Citizens’ Housing Council, “Direct Answers to Direct Questions Regarding the Current Crisis in the Public Housing Controversy in Los Angeles,” December 11, 1951, 2, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 49; Nelson is quoted in Leo Goodman, “What Makes the Real Estate Lobby Tick?” Journal of Housing 7, no. 12 (December 1950): 424. 46. “Junta del comité de acción civica en Aliso Village,” La Opinión, September 7, 1945, 3; “Aliso Village Tenants Squelch Racist Incident; Vote Support of FEPC,” California Eagle, September 12, 1946, 2; Helen Taylor, “In Aliso Village They Want a New Party,” People’s World, November 28, 1947, 3; Ted Kalman, “In Aliso Annex They Want Third Party,” People’s World, February 3, 1948, 3; “Negro Achievements Stressed in Exhibit at Rodger Young Village,” California Eagle, February 19, 1948, 2; Virginia Gardner, “Hard Times Hit Village,” People’s World, October 25, 1949, 2. 47. The 1946 racial composition of Rodger Young Village was 75.8 percent white, 13.3 percent Negro, and 10.9 percent other, “City Housing Projects,” California Eagle, September 5, 1946, 4; Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 173, 184–85. 48. California Legislature, Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, Third Report, 74–75; “Tenney Given Data on Reds at Rodger Young,” Hollywood Citizen-News, October 4, 1946, 13; “Quonset Pair to Be Ousted,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1946, pt. 2, p. 1; “Mayor Orders Ouster of Red,” Los Angeles Examiner, October 5, 1946. For a more complete account of this episode, see Don Parson, “The Burke Incident: Political Belief in Los Angeles’ Public Housing during the Domestic Cold War,” Southern California Quarterly 84, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 53–74. 49. Resolution by L. E. Timberlake, October 16, 1946, Council File 25,298; City Clerk to CHA, October 16, 1946, ibid.; “Evict Leftist, Council Tells Housing Authority,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1946, pt. 1, p. 2; “Timberlake Leads Fight,” Los Angeles Examiner, October 17, 1946; Rasmussen quoted in “Editor’s Eviction Protested,” People’s World, October 17, 1946, 1; “Ban Radicals from Housing,” Los Angeles Examiner, October 24, 1946; “Vets Housing Fight,” People’s World, October 25, 1946, 3;

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Nicola Giulii to City Council, October 24, 1946 (3 pages plus attachment), Council File 25,298. 50. Kraus, In the City Was a Garden, 189; October 18, 1946, policy resolution of the National Maritime Union, Council File 25,298; Leota and Arnold Fantl to City Council, October 23, 1946, Council File 25,298. 51. Resolution by Ed J. Davenport, October 30, 1946, Council File 25,551; Ray L. Chesebro, “Opinion re Authority of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles . . . Tenant Selection,” November 6, 1946, Council File 25,551. 52. “‘Lily White’ Project Site of New Housing Authority OfWce,” California Eagle, September 5, 1946, 4; “Negroes By-Passed in Promotions by Housing Authority,” California Eagle, August 22, 1945, 3; petition quoted in “‘No bias’ Policy Plea Renewed,” People’s World, July 21, 1948, 3; “2 Shot in Housing Project Feud,” California Eagle, July 22, 1948, 1, 18; “Harmony Exists in Housing Project as All Races Mingle,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 26, 1948, 9. 53. Haskell interview, October 3, 1982. 54. Tris CofWn, “The Slickest Lobby,” Nation, March 23, 1946, 340–42; Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930, 54; Nelson is quoted in Goodman, “What Makes the Real Estate Lobby Tick?” 423. 55. Mark L. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), ch. 4; Charles Abrams, The Future of Housing (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1946), 311; Richard O. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966), 45. 56. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930, 84; Senator Tobey as quoted in Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration, 94. 57. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration, 95, 97, 100. 58. Ibid., 134; “A Dream of the Housing Paradise,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1949, pt. 2, p. 4; Truman letter in Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930, 97. 59. Housing Act of 1949, 81st Cong., 1st sess., ch. 338 (July 15, 1949), U.S. Statutes at Large 63:413–44; Alan Wolfe, America’s Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 84; Stanley Furman, “Analysis of the Housing Act of 1949,” report presented to the CHA on October 28, 1949, in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection, Record Group 2 (Los Angeles CIO Council), [Box 24], Housing File 2; “Legislative History of Public Housing Traced through 25 Years,” Journal of Housing 19 (October 15, 1962): 440–41. The HHFA and the PHA were the 1947 successors of the NHA and the FPHA, respectively.

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60. Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: The Story of the “Los Angeles Times,” Its Publishers, and Their InXuence on Southern California (New York: Putnam, 1977), 259; “Bowron Is Our Choice,” Los Angeles Sentinel (May 19, 1949), C7. 61. Campaign statement by Bowron, 1949, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 37; Richard Baisden, “Labor Unions in Los Angeles Politics” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1958), 323; “Lloyd Aldrich, Candidate for Mayor, States Platform,” California Eagle, May 5, 1949, 5; “The Problems Are Still Here,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 9, 1949, C11. 62. “Ten Thousand Units OKed for L.A. by Egan,” Los Angeles Housing News, June 1949, 1, 2; Mayor Bowron to City Council, August 8, 1949, Council File 39,066 (part 2); Ordinance 95,222, Council File 39,066 (part 2); “$100 Million Loan for Housing Asked,” People’s World, August 9, 1949, 3. 63. “A Chance to Get Some Homes,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 7, 1949, C7. 4. The “Headline-Happy Public Housing War” 1. Guy Havard Raner Jr., “Public Housing and Politics: An Inquiry into the Historical and Political Background of Public Housing and an Estimate of Its Future in the City of Los Angeles” (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1957), 218; “L.A. Housing Body Scans Sites for 10,000 Units,” People’s World, December 20, 1949, 2; Simon Eisner, “Simon Eisner: Seven Decades of Planning and Development in the Los Angeles Region,” interview by Edward A. Holden, 1992, transcript (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 54. 2. John Cornell, “Housing Project Protested,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 21, 1950, 6; “‘Home Like a Wife,’ Housing Group Told,” Los Angeles Sentinel, September 21, 1950, A1, A3; John Cornell, “Double Talk Creates Dissension over L.A. Public Housing Plans,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 26, 1950, 26. 3. “Proposition No. 10. Public Housing Projects. Requiring Election to Establish,” in Pros and Cons—1950 Ballot Measures (n.d.), 27–32, League of Women Voters Collection (Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge, California), Box LWVLA I, Folder: 46; Bob Bergen, “Public Housing Election Issue,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 8, 1950, 3, 38; “Public Housing Loses in California,” Journal of Housing 7 (November 1950): 395–96; “Council Votes 12–1 for Public Housing,” Los Angeles Times, November 23, 1950, pt. 1, p. 2; “City Council Ignores Complaints of Citizens, Approves Home Project,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 30, 1950, A2. 4. “Judge Ends Ban on Housing Projects,” Los Angeles Examiner, March 13, 1951; Drake v. City of Los Angeles, 38 C.2d 872; 243 P.2d 525 (1952).

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5. Montecito Property Owners for Public Housing, December 9, 1950, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection, Record Group 2, [Box 24], Housing File 2; “Owners Buck Housing Project,” People’s World, December 12, 1950, 10; G. W. Reed, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, to City Council, January 11, 1951, Council File 46,112; Golden West Lodge No. 86 to City Council, February 8, 1951, Council File 46,112; Joan Rogers to City Council, March 22, 1951, Council File 46,112. 6. “L.A. ‘Clear Title’ Move Paves Way on Home Projects,” Los Angeles Mirror, April 6, 1951, 5; “CPC Holds Open Confab on Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, April 28, 1951, A7; “500 Battling to Save Homes,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 22, 1951; Montecito Hills Improvement Association quotation is from “Housing Projects Socialistic, Opponents Tell Councilmen,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1951, pt. 2, p. 1; “Council Votes for Low-Rent Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1951, pt. 1, p. 1; “Council Approves Disputed Housing Sites,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 28, 1951, A1; “Housing Foes Lose Attempt to Stall Project,” People’s World, June 28, 1951, 3. 7. Nixon to Delaney, August 29, 1951, Council File 50,006; Opinion of City Attorney re: “Rights of the City Council under Independent Appropriations Act . . . ,” September 20, 1951, Council File 50,006; “Scheme to Scuttle LA Housing Blocked,” People’s World, September 24, 1951, 6; “Obstacles Beset Public Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 29, 1951, A1, A2. 8. Holland quoted in Richard Donovan, “The Great Los Angeles Public Housing Mystery,” Reporter 6 (March 4, 1952): 25–29; “Obstacles Beset Public Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 29, 1951, A1, A2; Richard Baisden, “Labor Unions in Los Angeles Politics” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1958), 363. For more on Davenport’s political rodentry, see Don Parson, “‘The Darling of the Town’s Neo-Fascists’: The Bombastic Political Career of Councilman Ed J. Davenport,” Southern California Quarterly 81, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 467–505. 9. “Council About-Face Halts Housing Push,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1951, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; Donovan, “The Great Los Angeles Public Housing Mystery”; “City Council Reneges on Housing,” People’s World, December 4, 1951, 3; “Opponents Veto Public Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 6, 1951, A1, A3; John Anson Ford to Bowron, December 10, 1951, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII, 14, d, cc(1)/Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Misc Letters. 10. Frank Neill to Council, December 3, 1951, Council File 39,066 (part 1); D. M. Morandini to Council, December 4, 1951, Council File 39,066 (part 1); Carpenters Local 929 to Kenneth Hahn, December 21, 1951, Council File 39,066 (part 1).

240

Notes to Chapter 4

11. E. R. Thrapp to Ed Davenport, December 11, 1951, Council File 30,966 (attachments); H. Bock to Ed Davenport, December 15, 1951, Council File 30,966 (attachments); Home Owners and Taxpayers Association to City Council, December 25, 1951, Council File 30,966 (part 1); Albert Leonard to City Council, December 4, 1951, Council File 30,966 (part 1); “Public Housing Bureaucrats Upset,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1951, pt. 2, p. 4. 12. Raner, “Public Housing and Politics,” 223–27; Robert Gerhart Lane, “The Administration of Fletcher Bowron as Mayor of the City of Los Angeles” (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1954), 120, 129; “Council Told It Can Cancel Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1952, pt. 2, pp. 1, 9; “City Aide Joins Fight on Housing Plan,” People’s World, December 11, 1951, 3; “Council Checks Plot to Scuttle Housing,” People’s World, December 12, 1951, 3; “Attorney Urges Cancellation of Housing Pact,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 13, 1951, A4; “Opinion: Rejection of Public Housing by City Attorney Ray L. Chesbro, Report No. 8,” Wled December 19, 1951, Council File 39,066 (part 1). 13. Minutes of the December 26, 1951, Council Meeting, Council File 39,066, sup. 1; Timberlake quoted in “Minorities Attacked as Council Reaches Housing Plan Showdown,” People’s World, December 27, 1951, 3, 6; “Council Votes to Cancel Public Housing Projects,” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1951, pt. 1, pp. 1, 4; Raner, “Public Housing and Politics,” 227; City Clerk to Mayor Bowron, December 26, 1951, Council File 39,066, sup. 1; “rejected . . .” quoted in City Clerk to CHA, December 26, 1951, Council File 39,066, sup. 1. 14. John Taylor Egan to Bowron, December 12, 1951, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 49, Folder: Pub Hous Admin and Fed Hous Admin; Bowron quoted in “Bowron Straddles LA Housing Issue,” People’s World, December 20, 1951, 3. 15. Bowron to City Council (14 pages), January 2, 1952, Council File 39,066, sup. 1; “Voters Will Get Housing Issue,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 6; “C of C Head Raps Bowron for Action,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1952, pt. 1, p. 1; “Bowron’s Action Shocks Builders, OfWcial Says,” Los Angeles Times, January 5, 1952, pt. 1, p. 3; “The Mayor on Public Housing,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4. 16. Radio Broadcast by Mayor Bowron, KFI, January 6, 1952, Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Mayor’s Broadcasts on Housing 1952; “High Court Hears Pleas on Housing Controversy,” Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1952, pt. 1, p. 1; “Housing Issue on June Ballot,” Los Angeles Sentinel, January 24, 1952, A1; CASH campaign letter, Geo. H. Eason, January 31, 1952, Max Mont Collection (Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge, California), Box MM22, Folder 13.

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17. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. City of Los Angeles, 38 C.2d 853; 243 P.2d 515 (April 1952); “LA Council DeWes State High Court on Housing,” People’s World, April 30, 1952, 3; “Housing Fight May Remain on L.A. Ballot,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 2, 1952, 20. 18. Bowron, “if it appears . . .” from Bowron to Fay Rosenblatt, May 15, 1952, League of Women Voters Collection, Box LWVLA 1, Folder 1; Bowron Radio Address, May 18, 1952, as quoted in Radio Broadcast by Councilman John C. Holland—Station KFI, June 1, 1952, John Holland Papers (Special Collections, California State University at Los Angeles), Box 42, Folder 6; Re: Invitations to Conference (2 pages), Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Conferences on Public Housing TV Program May 1952; “Bowron Calls Housing Fight Peace Parley,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 15, 1952, 12, 25. 19. “Housing Foes Protest Mayor’s ‘Peace’ Hearing,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 20, 1952, 3, 18; “Irate Property Owners Barred from Mayor’s Housing Hearing,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; McIntyre Faries, Rememb’ring (Glendale, Calif.: GrifWn Publishing, 1993), 151, 159. 20. “Agenda: Hearing and Conference Concerning the Reactivation of the 10,000 Dwelling Unit Slum Clearance Low Rent Housing Program (Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5),” Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Conferences on Public Housing TV Program May 1952; Bowron quoted in “Bowron Rips into Parker on Housing Crime Report,” Los Angeles Daily News, May 24, 1952, 1, 4; “Sensations Hinted in Housing Battle,” Los Angeles Times, May 25, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 19. 21. “Public Housers’ Sounding Board,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4; Dockweiler quoted in “Opponents Brand Housing Hearing ‘Kangaroo Court,’” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1952, pt. 2, p. 1; Memo, May 23, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 7; “Background of Housing Claims,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4. 22. Radio Broadcast by Councilman John C. Holland—Station KFI, June 1, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 6; Leonard Freedman, “Group Opposition to Public Housing” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1959), 241; James L. Beebe to Bowron, May 24, 1952, Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Conferences on Public Housing TV Program May 1952; Bowron to Beebe, May 26, 1952, Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Conferences on Public Housing TV Program May 1952; Beebe to Bowron, May 26, 1952, Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Conferences on Public Housing TV Program May 1952. 23. “Battle on Housing Hits Three Fronts,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 19; “Slum Clearance Report Jolts Housing Advocates,” Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 6; Bowron and Beebe quoted in “Mayor and Beebe Clash on Housing,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 3.

242

Notes to Chapter 4

24. Herbert M. Baus, transcript of interview by Enid Hart Douglass, 1990 (Oral History Program, Claremont Graduate School, for the California State Archives State Government Oral History Program), 43; “Don’t Pay Somebody Else’s Rent,” Committee against Socialist Housing “No on B” leaXet, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 50; “Stop Socialist Housing Grab,” “No on B” circular, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 6; “Crime in Public Housing!” ad in Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1952; Additional “No on B” campaign material is contained in Max Mont Collection, Box 22, Folder 13. 25. “All Faiths United for a Better L.A.,” ad in Los Angeles Mirror, June 2, 1952, 24; Citizens for Slum Clearance, “Yes on Prop B” circular, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 7; “Slums Must Go! Vote YES on Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Daily News, May 22, 1952, 30. 26. “Council Acts to Abandon Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 16; “Figures Reveal Housing Lost in 12 Districts,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1952, pt. 1, p. 11. 27. KFI Radio Broadcast by Mayor Bowron, June 8, 1952, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Mayor’s Broadcasts on Housing 1952; “The Mayor Says the Voters Are Just Dumb,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4; Small Property Owners League (Highland Park Branch), Open Letter to Mayor Bowron, June 20, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 8; McCarrol to Bowron, July 31, 1952, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Memos & Misc. Letter re Housing. 28. Holland to members of Congress, June 12, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 7; “Senate Sidesteps L.A. Housing Row,” Los Angeles Mirror, June 12, 1952, 1, 26; Holland to Nixon, July 29, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 8; Gleason to Holland, August 11, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 44, Folder: Public Housing Controversy. 29. “Re: Details of Public Housing Program ModiWcation” (2 pages), August 18, 1952, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Communications from Hous Auth 5/20/52–9/19/52; “L.A. Mayor Meets Truman in Secret (Housing) Parley,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 18, 1952, 2, 47; Art White, “Bowron ModiWes Housing Plans,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 20, 1952, 5, 20; “Bowron Bares Housing Changes, Scraps L.A. ‘Tenement Skyscrapers,’” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 20, 1952, 1; “Bowron Tells Truman OK on Housing,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 21, 1952, 1; Mayor Bowron to City Council, August 25, 1952, Council File 54,433. 30. “So the Mayor Says It’s Final,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4; “Report of Councilman George R. Cronk. Subject: Trip to Washington, D.C. August 19, 20 & 21, 1952—Public Housing,” Council File 39,066, sup. 7; Minutes of City Council Meeting, August 25, 1952, Council File 54,433.

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243

31. Veterans Affairs and Public Housing and Finance Committees to City Council, n.d., Council File 39,066, sup. 8; quotation is from “Court Orders L.A. Housing Action,” Los Angeles Mirror, June 27, 1952, 2; “Claim for Damages” to the City of Los Angeles from the CHA, July 7, 1952, Council File 54,001; Nicola Giulii to City Council, July 7, 1952, Council File 54,001; “Plan to Kill LA Housing Kicks Back,” People’s World, July 9, 1952, 3. 32. “Council Filibusters in Housing Row,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 5, 1952, A2; Art White, “Contempt Order Faces Council in Housing Fight,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 8, 1952, 2, 14; “Council Must Go to Court,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 9, 1952, A2; “L.A. Appeals Housing Feud to Supreme Court,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 12, 1952, 4. 33. City of Los Angeles v. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, certiorari denied, 344 U.S. 836; 73 S.Ct. 46 (October 13, 1952); Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. City of Los Angeles, 40 Cal.2d 682; 256 P.2d 4 (April 1953), 11. 34. “Bowron Administration Moving People via Gestapo Housing Authority . . . ,” n.d., Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 50; Davenport quoted in “Commies InWltrate L.A. Housing Authority,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 6, 1952, A2; “Housing War Death Threat Told,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 6, 1952, 12; Alexander to Parson, January 13, 1982, in possession of the author. 35. Transcript of Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Mosier M. Meyer, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 584912 (1952), August 29, 1952, Frank Wilkinson papers, unprocessed material (Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles); Frank Wilkinson, “In Defense of Public Housing: Redbaiting Your Friends,” speech given at UCLA’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, November 5, 1981, taped copy in possession of Don Parson; Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996; the transcripts of Wilkinson’s testimony can also be found in Council File 54,917; “OfWcial Text of Wilkinson’s Answers in Housing Suit Quiz,” Los Angeles Examiner, August 30, 1952, 5. 36. O’Neill quoted in “Housing Aide DeWes Quiz, Suspended,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 29, 1952, 2, 4; “Housing Aide Faces Ouster,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 30, 1952, A4; Carlton Williams, “Lid Blows off Housing; Top Aide Suspended,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1952, 1, 4. 37. Navarro, Cronk, and Davenport quoted in “L.A. Housing Aide Suspended as Council Demands Red Quiz,” Los Angeles Examiner, August 30, 1952, 1, 5; “Red Probe Asked as Housing Man Shuns L.A. Quiz,” Los Angeles Mirror, August 30, 1952, 3, 10; the Wlm that Davenport spoke of was And 10,000 More; Council Resolution, September 2, 1952, Council File 54,917.

244

Notes to Chapter 4

38. Transcript to Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Mosier M. Meyer, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 584912 (September 2, 1952), Frank Wilkinson papers, unprocessed material. 39. Hahn quoted in Art White and Bob Johnson, “City Dad Throws Wild Tantrum,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 3, 1952, 3, 23; Carlton E. Williams, “Mayor Bowron Called as Housing Witness,” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 4; Davenport and Roybal quoted in Magner White, “KniWng Threat Charge in Hot Council Row,” Los Angeles Examiner, September 4, 1952, 1, 10; “Roybal refuta un cargo del concejal Davenport,” La Opinión, September 4, 1952, 8; interview of Edward Roybal by Don Parson, Los Angeles, October 10, 1996. 40. Armado G. Torrez, Mexican Chamber of Commerce, to City Council, September 3, 1952, Council File 54,956; Allen quoted in Art White and Bob Johnson, “Davenport Goes Wild at Council Session,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 4, 1952, 2, 28; Davenport quoted in “City Council ‘Flees’ as Davenport Rages,” Los Angeles Daily News, September 4, 1952, 1, 4; “DeWende a Roybal la cámara de comercio,” La Opinión, September 5, 1952, 8. 41. “Davenport Hurls ‘Gestapo’ Charges,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 5, 1952, A2; “Davenport dice que deWende a los mexicanos,” La Opinión, September 6, 1952, 7; “Davenport Disgraces Council, Community,” Los Angeles Daily News, September 5, 1952, 46; “The Davenport Incident,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 6, 1952, B2; Ed J. Davenport, “An Open Letter to the Editors of All Los Angeles Newspapers” (9 pages), September 8, 1952, in the Los Angeles Examiner morgue, University of Southern California Regional History Center. 42. Bowron and Hogya quoted in Art White, “Mayor Slugs Housing Foe,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 5, 1952, 1, 3, 26; “Mr. Bowron tira un derechazo a un criticón,” La Opinión, September 6, 1952, 7; Weber quoted in “Offer Bowron Fight Purse,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 8, 1952, A12. 43. California Legislature, Seventh Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities (Sacramento: California Senate, 1953), 78–79; Wilkinson interviews, December 8, 1981, and June 26, 1996; Raner, “Public Housing and Politics,” 239–40; CHA press release (statement of Nicola Giulii), September 5, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 43, Folder 3; Giulii to Brown, September 5, 1952, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 50, Folder: Communications from Hous Auth 5/20/52–9/19/52; “Atty. Gen. Opens ‘CHA Reds’ Probe,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 6, 1952, 6. 44. “Twelve Named as Red Probe of L.A. Housing Starts,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 24, 1952, 4; Wilkinson, “In Defense of Public Housing: Redbaiting Your Friends,” November 5, 1981; Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996; Roby Heard and Sid Hughes; Combs quoted in “Red Probe Plans

Notes to Chapter 4

245

Bedside Quiz of Housing Employee,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 26, 1952, 3, 52; “Red Cell Meets in Housing Staff Told,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 26, 1952, A1, A6. 45. “Statement of George A. Beavers,” September 26, 1952, John Holland Papers, Box 43, Folder 3; California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 81–86; “3 CHA Workers Fired in Defying State Red Probe,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 27, 1952, 3, 20. 46. California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 86–90, 92–99; “3 CHA Workers Fired in Defying State Red Probe,” Los Angeles Mirror, September 27, 1952, 3, 20. 47. “LA Housing Aide Fired for Defying Witchhunters,” People’s World, October 29, 1952, 3, 6; “Housing Red Plot Told by Probers,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, October 29, 1952, A3; Carlton Williams, “Public Housing OfWcial Fired When He Dodges Red Query,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 99–109; “Statement of Frank Wilkinson,” October 28, 1952, Frank Wilkinson Papers, also in Wilkinson scrapbook, 1952–1960, in possession of Frank Wilkinson. 48. California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 99, 111–17; Combs quoted in Carlton E. Williams, “Public Housing OfWcial Fired as He Dodges Red Query,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; “Firing Service Gets Two More,” People’s World, October 30, 1952, 3. 49. California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 117–20 (though the letters supporting Wilkinson have not yet been released to the public in a CUAC exhibit, some copies are found in the Frank Wilkinson Papers); O’Dwyer to Commissioners, September 1, 1952, copy in Frank Wilkinson Papers, File: “Communications Rec’d after FW Suspension from Housing Authority,” unprocessed material; Raymond to Holtzendorff, September 6, 1952, copy in Frank Wilkinson Papers, File: “Communications Rec’d after FW Suspension from Housing Authority,” unprocessed material; “Public Statement by Eleanor Raymond,” October 28, 1952, Records of the Independent Progressive Party and Californians for Liberal Representation, 1946–1975 (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 1, Folder: Calif. for Liberal Rep. 50. Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996; “Housing Red Plot Told by Probers,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, October 29, 1952, A3; Combs quoted in Carlton Williams, “Public Housing OfWcial Fired When He Dodges Red Query,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1952, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2. For more on Jean Wilkinson, see her oral history in Grifrin Fariello, ed., Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 464–68, 537–40; for more on Frances Eisenberg, see her oral history in Fariello, Red Scare, 459–64.

246

Notes to Chapter 4

51. “Housing Seen as Red Plan,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, October 30, 1952, A4; California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Seventh Report, 132. 52. Quotations are from Haskell interview, October 3, 1982; “Hall Ban Blamed on Housing Chief,” People’s World, January 11, 1951, 3, 10. 53. Gwinn Amendment, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., ch. 578 (July 5, 1952) U.S. Statutes at Large 66:403; “23,000 L.A. Tenants Told to Sign Loyalty Oath,” People’s World, January 21, 1953, 8; Art White, “Public Housing Tenants Given Loyalty Oath; 1% Spurn Pledge,” Los Angeles Mirror, January 22, 1953, 51; Holtzendorff quoted in “Tenants Told to Sign Oath or Be Ousted,” Los Angeles Examiner, January 23, 1953, emphasis in original; “Loyalty Oath Ouster Halted,” Los Angeles Examiner, February 17, 1953; “‘Loyalty’ Evictions Halted in LA,” People’s World, March 2, 1953, 3. For more detail, see Civil Rights Congress Collection, Box 14: Loyalty Oath Cases, Public Housing, 1952–1953. 54. Housing Authority v. Cordova, Los Angeles Municipal Court No. 171371 (1954); Housing Authority v. Konick, Los Angeles Municipal Court No. 171372 (1954); Housing Authority v. Huling, Los Angeles Municipal Court No. 171373 (1954), Los Angeles Municipal Court No. 171374 (1954); Housing Authority v. Wycoff, Los Angeles Municipal Court No. 173307 (1954); Housing Authority v. Cordova, 130 C.A.2d Sup. 883; 279 P.2d 215 (January 1955). 55. Norris Poulson, “Who Would Have Ever Dreamed?” transcript of the memoirs of Norris Poulson, 1966 (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 158; Poulson to Harold Henry, January 5, 1952, Council File 39,066, sup. 4. 56. Baus, oral history transcript, 99, 100, 101; Ross, oral history transcript, 94; “Yes for Poulson, No for Housing,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1953, pt. 2, p. 4; “Public Housing without the Intent,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1953, pt. 2, p. 4. 57. Mayor Bowron radio broadcast, KNXT, May 5, 1953, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 40a; “Bowron Blasts Chandler Empire,” People’s World, May 7, 1953, 3; Poulson quoted in “Problem of Voter Cited by Poulson,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1953. 58. Cronk to Hoffman, March 23, 1953, Council File 57,577; “House Committee to Carry Ball for Norrie,” Los Angeles Daily News, May 1, 1953, 34; “U.S. Solons Set L.A. Housing Quiz,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 8, 1953, 5; Bowron quoted in Art White, “Mayor Again Raps the “Times”; Takes Issue with Housing Quiz,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 16, 1953, 9. 59. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, Hearings on Investigation of Public Housing Activities in Los Angeles, 83rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OfWce, May 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 1953),

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154–61, 211–56, 325–29, 356–57; “Verbal Tilts Rock Hearing on Housing,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1953, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2, 26, 27; Art White and Len Wagner, “Housing Boss Again Clashes with U.S. Solon,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 21, 1953, 4, 24; “Housing Boss ‘Howls’ as Book Tossed in Clash,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, May 21, 1953, A1, A14. 60. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, Hearings on Investigation of Public Housing Activities in Los Angeles, 422–31; Art White, “Housing Inquiry Over, but Echoes Due on Tuesday,” Los Angeles Mirror, May 22, 1953, 4, 35; “Bowron and Probers Clash as Housing Inquiry Ends,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1953, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2, 18; “Mayor Calls Hearing Shoddy, Raw, and Rigged,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1953, pt. 1, p. 2; “Bowron Grilled, Calls Housing Probe ‘Insult,’” Los Angeles Examiner, May 22, 1953, 1, 2; Clara Snyder to Bowron, May 23, 1953, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 49, Folder: Pub Housing or Annex 4-P-2. 61. “Strange Case of Mayor Bowron,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1953, pt. 2, p. 4. 62. “Poulson Elected,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1953, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: The Story of the “Los Angeles Times,” Its Publishers, and Their InXuence on Southern California (New York: Putnam, 1977), 265. 63. “Poulson Will Ask Five Housing OfWcials to Quit,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1953, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; Bowron quoted in “Bowron Reorganizes Housing Authority,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1953, pt. 1, pp. 1, 12; “Poulson Hits ‘Deathbed’ Appointments,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1953, pt. 1, p.1; Poulson quoted in “CHA ‘Death-Bed’ Naming Arouses Poulson Anger,” Los Angeles Mirror, June 24, 1953, 4, 33; Poulson oral history transcript, 219–20; “Mayor Bowron Takes His Revenge,” Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1953, pt. 2, p. 4; “Bowron Coup Stuns Poulson,” People’s World, June 25, 1953, 3; “Beavers to Stay on Job in Housing Row,” California Eagle, June 25, 1953, 1, 7. 64. Poulson, oral history transcript, 223–25; Minutes of Los Angeles City Council, July 6, 1953, Council File 59,200; Poulson to City Council, July 6, 1953, Council File 59,200 (published by the Los Angeles Sentinel as “Poulson’s Housing Remarks,” July 8, 1953, A-5); “13–1 Housing Vote Backs Poulson,” Los Angeles Mirror, July 6, 1953, 3, 32; “Council OKs Slash in Housing,” People’s World, July 7, 1953, 3. 65. Minutes of the City Council, July 8, 1953, Council File 59,200; “Mayor’s Housing Cut Approved by L.A. CHA,” Los Angeles Mirror, July 8, 1953, 7; George Beavers Jr. to Mayor and City Council, July 8, 1953, Council File 59,200; Holtzendorff quoted in “Armistice Is Declared in Public Housing Fracas,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 9, 1953, 2; “LA OfWcials Speed Public Housing Kill,” People’s World, July 9, 1953, 3, 6.

248

Notes to Chapter 5

66. “Poulson in Washington on Housing Plea,” Los Angeles Mirror, July 14, 1953, 18; “L.A. Housing Slashed 57% in D.C. Compromise Pact,” Los Angeles Mirror, July 16, 1953, 8; “Poulson Asks Congress OK Housing Scuttle,” People’s World, July 16, 1953, 3; Poulson oral history transcript, 228; “Public Housing Cut Best Deal Possible, Says Geo. Beavers,” California Eagle, July 22, 1953, 1. 67. “Housing Hassle Ended—Poulson,” Los Angeles Mirror, July 17, 1953, 3; “The Victory over Public Housing,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1953, pt. 1, p. 4; Ordinance 101,900, Council File 59,200; City Clerk to Public Housing Authority, August 5, 1953, Council File 59,200; “It’s OfWcial—Poulson, Council Kill Half of Housing Program,” People’s World, August 6, 1953, 3. 5. “Old Town, Lost Town, Shabby Town, Crook Town” 1. Marc A. Weiss, “The Origins and Legacy of Urban Renewal,” in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1985), 264; Ordinance 84,537, Council File 6135. 2. Los Angeles Town Hall, The Need for Urban Redevelopment Legislation in California (Los Angeles, March 1944); broadcast by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, KFI, August 3, 1944, Fletcher Bowron Collection. 3. Haskell interview, October 3, 1982; Mara Alexandra Cohen, “Public Sector Autonomy in Los Angeles: The Development of Redevelopment” (conference paper, Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, March 14–16, 1996), 14; Mara Alexandra Marks, “Shifting Ground: Bureaucratic Politics and Redevelopment in Los Angeles” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1999), 86–91. 4. Community Redevelopment Act, 56th sess., ch. 1326 (July 11, 1945), Statutes of California, 2478–2500; the 1950 amendments to the act are found in Joint Interim Committee on Community Redevelopment and Housing Problems of the Legislature of California, Community Redevelopment in California (Sacramento: California Senate, August 1950); in 1951, the act was codiWed and renamed the Community Redevelopment Law. 5. Mark L. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 109; Community Redevelopment Act; Eugene B. Jacobs and Jack G. Levine, “Redevelopment: Making Misused and Disused Land Available and Usable,” Hastings Law Journal 8 (1956–57): 251. 6. California State Reconstruction and Re-employment Commission, Blighted! Pamphlet No. 16 (Sacramento, 1946); Bowron quoted in Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Blight: The Problem, the Remedy (Los Angeles, 1948), 4, 5, 7.

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7. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, There’s Nothing Sentimental about Your Cash Register, 8th, 9th, and 10th consolidated report (Los Angeles, 1948). 8. CRA, “Los Angeles Redevelopment: How It Got Where It Is,” n.d., Bunker Hill Collection (Regional History Center, University of Southern California), Item 538, Box 11; Mayor Bowron to City Council, October 23, 1948, Council File 35,304; Clerk to Mayor Bowron, November 4, 1948, Council File 35,304. 9. NAACP to City Council, October 25, 1948, Council File 35,304; Grace Ito to City Council, October 26, 1948, Council File 35,304; Norman O. Houston to City Council, October 26, 1948, Council File 35,304; Phil Connelly to Mayor Bowron, November 17, 1948, in Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Collection, Record Group 1 (Phil Connelly Records), Box 28, Folder 8; Eisner oral history transcript, 58. 10. Charles B. Bennett, “Is Public Housing Needed for Urban Redevelopment?” American City 63 (November 1948): 84; City Council Resolution, October 26, 1948, Council File 35,320; Alexander to City Council, October 29, 1948, Council File 35,320; “City Planner Rapped on Housing Issue,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1948, pt. 2, pp. 1, 3. 11. CRA, Community Redevelopment into Assets, 1949, Bunker Hill Collection, Item 350, Box 13. 12. Jewel Bellush and Murray Hausknecht, “Urban Renewal: An Historical Overview,” in Urban Renewal: People, Politics, and Planning, ed. Jewel Bellush and Murray Hausknecht (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 12; Alan Wolfe, America’s Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 88. 13. Eisner oral history transcript, 63; Weiss, “The Origins and Legacy of Urban Renewal,” 270–71; Robert C. Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), 122, 340–41; Catherine Bauer, “Redevelopment: A MisWt in the Fifties,” in The Future of Cities and Urban Redevelopment, ed. Coleman Woodbury (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 9. 14. Mal Scott, Metropolitan Los Angeles: One Community (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1949), ch. 8; Drayton Bryant, Robert E. Alexander, Garrett Eckbo, and Reginald D. Johnson, A New Look for the City: Los Angeles, 1950 (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1949), ix; Robert E. Alexander and Drayton S. Bryant, Rebuilding a City: A Study of Redevelopment Problems in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1951), 39–41, 45; Tom Sitton, The Haynes Foundation and Urban Reform Philanthropy in Los Angeles: A History of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 1999), 124. 15. Broadcast by Mayor Bowron, Station KFI, February 25, 1951, Fletcher Bowron Collection.

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16. Quoted in “Leaders Hail Defeat of Housing Bill as Mandate,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1952, pt. 2, p. 14. 17. Ordinances 100,676 and 100,677, October 30, 1952, Council File 51,228; Wilkinson; Harby; and Davenport, “They want . . . ,” quoted in “Slum-Ending Ordinance Voted Unanimously by City Council,” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1952, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; Davenport, “give aid . . . ,” quoted in “‘Slum’ Ordinances Hit Minorities,” People’s World, November 3, 1952, 3, 6. 18. California Legislature, Report of the Joint Senate-Assembly Committee on Community Redevelopment and Housing Problems, 59th Sess. (Sacramento: California State Printing OfWce, 1951), 26; “A Sound Redevelopment Plan,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4; David F. Beatty et al., Redevelopment in California, 2nd ed. (Point Arena, Calif.: Solano Press Books, 1995), 5, 185. 19. Bob Bergen, “Realtors to Offer Positive Program,” Los Angeles Mirror, January 23, 1953, 51. 20. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities, 176; Housing Act of 1954, 83d Cong., 2nd Sess., ch. 649 (August 2, 1954), U.S. Statutes at Large 68:590–648; “Housing Act of 1954,” Journal of Housing 11 (August–September 1954): 261–62, 268–70, 285, 290; Mel Scott, American City Planning since 1880 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 497–504. 21. Cohen, “Public Sector Autonomy in Los Angeles,” 5, 10; Murray Teigh Bloom, “Los Angeles Shows How Slums Can Be Stopped,” Reader’s Digest, March 1956, 101–5; Gilbert E. Morris, “What Los Angeles Does to Prevent Growth of Slums,” Western City 32 (March 1956): 46–47; Burns quoted in “Realtors Attack ‘Bulldozer’ Approach to Urban Renewal,” House and Home, December 1958, 48–49, John Holland Papers, Box 14, Folder 3. 22. Pat Adler, The Bunker Hill Story (Glendale, Calif.: La Siesta Press, 1963), 29; William Pugsley, Bunker Hill: Last of the Lofty Mansions (Coronado del Mar, Calif.: Trans-Anglo Books, 1977); Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Gail Sansbury, “Lost Streets of Bunker Hill,” California History 74, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 394–407, 448–49. 23. John Fante, Ask the Dust (1939) (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1980), 45; Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye (1982) (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1996), 276; Raymond Chandler, The High Window (1942) (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 53–54. 24. “Engineers at Work Figuring on Razing,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1912, pt. 2, pp. 1, 10; “An Estimate of the Cost of Leveling Bunker Hill,” Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer 10 (December 7, 1912): 7; “Razing of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles,” Western Construction News 4 (July 10, 1929): 339–40; George J. Eberle, “The Business District,” in Los Angeles: Preface to a Master Plan, ed. George W. Robbins and L. Deming Tilton (Los Angeles: PaciWc Southwest Academy, 1941), 128.

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25. Bunker Hill Democratic Club resolution, October 2, 1939, Council File 3274 (1939); “Bunker Hill Residents Demand Slum Clearance,” People’s World, October 16, 1939, 2; Bunker Hill Village Council Resolution, November 28, 1940, Council File 4746 (1940). 26. “Huge Bunker Hill Housing Plan Not to Deprive Any of Shelter,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 21, 1949, A3; “Bunker Hill First City Slum Target,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1949, pt. 2, p. 8; Fletcher Bowron, “Progress Report on Community Redevelopment and Housing Delivered to the State Legislative Joint Senate-Assembly Committee on Community Redevelopment and Housing,” November 22, 1949, John Anson Ford Collection, Box 65, BIII 14 d bb(10). 27. Alexander and Bryant, Rebuilding a City, 44–45. 28. CRA, City Planning Department, Health Department, “The Bunker Hill Area: Determination of Blight,” April 1951, Council File 51,375/Edward Roybal Collection (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill. 29. Henry A. Babcock, Consulting Engineers, Feasibility of Redeveloping the Bunker Hill Area, Los Angeles, report prepared for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, January 2, 1951); Jack Young, “Real Estate Bonanza Scheme Gets Demo Blessing,” People’s World, March 19, 1951, 5. 30. Broadcast by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, KFI, March 25, 1951, Fletcher Bowron Collection; “Los Angeles Plans Redevelopment Bond Issue for Bunker Hill,” Western City 27 (January 1951): 31; Joel Friedman, “The Political Economy of Urban Renewal: Changes in Land Ownership in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles” (MA thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 1978), 116. 31. “Let’s Curb Eyesore on Bunker Hill,” Los Angeles Mirror, March 9, 1951, 30; Frank Observer, “Housing Council Committee Endorses Slum Plan,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 16, 1951, 28; “Southland Architects Back Slum Clearance Proposition,” Los Angeles Mirror, March 21, 1951, 29; city planning director quoted in “Slum Costs Cited by Planning Chief,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1951, pt. 2, p. 1; resident of Bunker Hill quoted in Francis Lightfoot Lee, in “Mailbag,” Los Angeles Mirror, March 26, 1951, 28; “Civil Defense Head for Proposition C,” Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1951, pt. 3, p. 8; “Tuesday Primary Propositions,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1951, pt. 2, p. 4; “Vote Proposals A, B, and C, Builders Urge,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1951, pt. 2, p. 1; “City’s Future Depends on ‘Yes’ Vote for Propositions A, B, C,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, April 2, 1951, B2. 32. CRA, “Los Angeles Redevelopment,” 16, 20, 23; Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, Annual Report, 1950–51 (Los Angeles, November 1, 1951), Council File 51,375; “Bowron Pushes Slum Land Grab,” People’s World, November 18, 1952, 4.

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33. CRA, “The Story of Ann: A Leading Lady of Urban Redevelopment,” June 29, 1961, Bunker Hill Collection, Item 387, Box 13; Poulson oral history transcript, 256–59. 34. James Hatton to Roybal, emphasis in original, October 9, 1954, Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill. 35. DCA, “Resist the Rape . . . ,” 1954, Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill; DCA, “We’ve Got ’Em on the Run,” received November 9, 1954, Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill. 36. CRA, Resolution 48, November 2, 1954, Council File 66,300; City Council Minutes, November 15, 1954, Los Angeles City Archives. 37. CRA, November 15, 1954, Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 1; Sesnon to City Council, November 15, 1954, Council File 66,300; Carlton Williams, “Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project Advanced in Council,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1954, pt. 2, pp. 1, 26. 38. “Bunker Hill ‘Face-Lift’ Nearer,” Los Angeles Mirror, November 16, 1954; “Bunker Hill ‘Redevelopment’ Hustled to OK,” People’s World, November 17, 1954, 6; Resolution: “Re Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project,” November 15, 1954, Council File 66,300; Maria Gallegos de Hillary to Roybal, November 16, 1954, emphasis in original, Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill; memo cited in Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: The Story of the “Los Angeles Times,” Its Publishers, and Their InXuence on Southern California (New York: Putnam, 1977), 267; Arthur Schott to Senator Capehart, November 22, 1954, as quoted in Gail Sansbury, “‘Dear Senator Capehart’: Letters Sent to the U.S. Senate’s 1954 FHA Investigation,” Planning History Studies 11, no. 2 (1997): 28, emphasis in original. 39. “The Job That Must Be Done,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1954, pt. 2, p. 4; Ruth M. Harmer, “Trick Play at City Hall: ‘Socialism’ and the New Los Angeles Housing Plan,” Frontier 6 (February 1955): 11–13. 40. Broadcast by Mr. William T. Sesnon Jr., Station KFI, November 21, 1954, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill. 41. Burns to Holland, March 25, 1955, John Holland Papers, Box 4, Folder 2; Burns to Roybal, March 25, 1955, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill; Apartment House Association Resolution, April 11, 1955, Council File 66,300; George O. Prussell, executive vice president of the Home Builders Institute, to Ernest Debs, April 12, 1955, Council File 66,300; Fred W. Marlow, president of the Los Angeles Realty Board, to City Council, April 12, 1955, Council File 66,300; “Association Opposes Bunker Hill Redevelopment, Asks Rehabilitation,” Western Housing 38 (May 1955): 7. 42. Mrs. Molly Flora to Council, April 15, 1955, Council File 66,300; Mrs. Luz Minoz Drake to Holland, May 4, 1955, John Holland Papers,

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Box 4, Folder 2; John Beckler, “New Bunker Hill Plan under Study,” Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1956, pt. 2, pp. 1, 3. 43. Henry A. Babcock, Consulting Engineers, May 15, 1956, Report on the Economic Phases of the Bunker Hill Renewal Project, Los Angeles, California, Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, iv, 44, 45, in the Southern California Urban Planning Collection (Huntington Library, San Marino, California). 44. CRA, June 1956, Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project (Calif. R-1), Tentative Plan, 15, Southern California Urban Planning Collection. 45. “Alternative Redevelopment Plan,” n.d., submitted by Robert G. McInerny, Louis L. Mellon, Roy C. and Dorothy Troeger, Herbert H. Horn, Roy Fitzgerald, Gwyn Redwine, Edward Gross, Mrs. A. J. Howard, Dolly and Anna MacKenzie, Anthony Peters, and the 315 South Bunker Hill Corp., prepared by Charles E. McClung, in Council File 74,638. 46. “City Council Tentative Plan Public Hearing/Professional Testimony— City Planning,” July 2, 1956, Council File 74,638; McClung to Roybal, July 3, 1956, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 4, Folder: Bunker Hill. 47. City Council Minutes, July 10, 1956, Council File 74,638. 48. City Council Minutes, July 10, 1956, Council File 74,638; H. Wm. Hess, “Memorandum/Discussion—City Council,” n.d., Council File 74,638; “Bunker Hill Asks about Code Laxity,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, July 11, 1956, pt. 1, p. 2; “Action on Bunker Hill Redevelopment Delayed,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1956, pt. 3, p. 30; “Apartment Association Opposes Bunker Hill Redevelopment,” Western Housing 40 (July 1956): 10, 18; CRA, “Report of the Community Redevelopment Agency . . . upon Alternative Plans . . . ,” July 27, 1956, Council File 74,638. 49. Ordinance 108,424; “Bunker Hill Plan OK’d by Council,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1956, pt. 3, p. 1. 50. CRA, “Redevelopment Plan for the Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project 1b, a Part of Central Redevelopment Area,” January 1958, Southern California Urban Planning Collection; Alternative Plan of Armilda Howard, June 24, 1958, Council File 85,141 S-3; Charles E. McClung to City Council, September 18, 1958, John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 1; Briggs Apartment-Hotel Company, “Re-Submission of Alternative Plan,” September 17, 1958, John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 1; Phill Silver, “Alternative Plan of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldman,” October 28, 1958; John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 1; Alternative Plans are found in Council File 85,141 S-3. 51. Mary Tipton to City Council, August 11, 1958, Council File 85,141 S-1 (pt. 2); petition Wled by Phill Silver on behalf of Bunker Hill tenants, August 19, 1958, Council File 85,141 S-1 (pt. 1). 52. Phill Silver, “I Am Appearing Today on Behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldman . . . ,” August 14, 1958, Council File 85,141 S-1 (pt. 1); Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes, 122 C.A.2d 777; 266 P.2d 105 (1954).

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Notes to Chapter 5

53. CRA, “Rebuttal Statement on Relocation,” November 14, 1958, Bunker Hill Collection, Item 396, Box 13. 54. Phill Silver, “Final Argument of Phill Silver in Opposition to Final Plan of Community Redevelopment Agency (Bunker Hill),” n.d. (sent to Holland by Silver with a cover letter dated January 8, 1959), John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 2; Roger Arnebergh, “Opinion: Community Redevelopment Law—Bunker Hill Project . . . ,” December 15, 1958, John Holland Papers, Box 4, Folder 1. 55. Ordinance 113,231; Poulson and Sesnon quoted in “Bunker Hill Project Approved by Council,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; editorial quotation from “Bunker Hill’s Rebirth Is Assured,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1959, pt. 3, p. 4; Ray Herbert, “Bunker Hill Project to Give City New Skyline,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 2, 21; “Los Angeles City Council OK’s Spectacular Renewal Project,” American City 74 (August 1959): 96. 56. Henry Goldman, et al. v. the City of Los Angeles, the Council of the City of Los Angeles, the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 723,434 (Wled 1959); Frank W. Babcock v. the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 725,375 (Wled 1959); Clara M. Swigart, et al. v. the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 725,506 (Wled 1959); Mary Cunliffe Trautwein, et al. v. the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 725,614 (Wled 1959); H. G. Redwine, et al. v. the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 725,637 (Wled 1959); In the Matter of the Redevelopment Plan for the Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project 1B . . . , Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 736,840 (1961). 57. In Re Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project, 61 Cal.2d 21; 389 P.2d 538 (1964). 58. CRA, November 30, 1964, “Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project— Relocation Report,” John Holland Papers, Box 3, Folder 2; Roybal to Mrs. Sarah Guravich, April 24, 1962, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 47, Folder: Urban Renewal (general); Roybal’s posture toward Bunker Hill urban renewal can be seen in Katherine Underwood, “Process and Politics: Multiracial Electoral Coalition Building and Representation in Los Angeles’ Ninth District, 1949–1962” (PhD diss., University of California at San Diego, 1992), 242–43. The conservative Holland and liberal Roybal were similarly united in their opposition to city plans for Chavez Ravine (see chapter 6). 59. CRA, “Bunker Hill Urban Renewal Project,” http://www.cityoXa.org/ CRA/bhhome.htm.

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60. Gene Marine, “Bunker Hill: Pep Pill for Downtown Los Angeles,” Frontier 10 (August 1959): 5–8+. 6. This Modern Marvel 1. Poulson oral history transcript, 214; Norris Poulson, “Renaissance of Downtown Los Angeles,” speech to Downtown Business Men’s Association, Los Angeles, June 29, 1956. 2. “The Chavez Ravine Incident,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1959, pt. 3, p. 4; “The Truth in Chavez Ravine,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, May 15, 1959, pt. 2, p. 7. 3. “Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” April 9, 1962, John Holland Papers, Box 9, Folder 2; “Settlement Losing Battle for Its Life,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1951, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; Commission of Immigration and Housing of California, A Community Survey Made in Los Angeles City (San Francisco, 1919), 14. 4. Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (1948) (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 224; “Transportation Fight,” People’s World, November 27, 1946, 3; “Transit Fight Continues,” People’s World, December 27, 1946, 3; interview of Alice McGrath by Don Parson, Thousand Oaks, California, January 28, 1995; Alice GreenWeld McGrath, “The Education of Alice McGrath,” transcript of interview by Michael Batler, 1987 (Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles), 253–57; Alexander oral history transcript, 338. To get a glimpse of the enchantment and community solidarity of postwar Chavez Ravine, see the wonderful photographs accompanied by the reminiscences of former residents in Don Normark, Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999). 5. Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Accomplishments 1944 (Los Angeles, 1945), 26–27; Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Accomplishments 1947 (Los Angeles, 1948), 15; “Mexican Area Called ‘No. 1 slum,’” People’s World, March 18, 1948, 3; quotation is from Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Accomplishments 1948 (Los Angeles, 1949), 10–11; Robert E. Alexander and Drayton S. Bryant, Rebuilding a City: A Study of Redevelopment Problems in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1951), 47, 53. 6. Drayton Bryant, Robert E. Alexander, Garrett Eckbo, and Reginald D. Johnson, A New Look for the City: Los Angeles, 1950 (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1949), 106; Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Accomplishments 1948, 13. 7. Bryant et al., A New Look for the City, 93, 113–14, 116, 140. 8. Helen Taylor, “Public Housing—or Chavez Ravines?” People’s World, April 4, 1949, 3. 9. CHA to “The Families of the Palo Verde and Chavez Ravine Areas”

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(signed by management supervisor Sidney Green), July 24, 1950, John Holland Papers, Box 42, Folder 7; “Huge Public Housing Plan in Chavez Ravine Disclosed,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1950, pt. 2, p. 1; “Planes para Wncas modernas en ‘Chavez Ravine,’” La Opinión, August 9, 1950, 8; “3350 Unit Housing Project Announced,” People’s World, August 9, 1950, 10; “Housing Project Should Be Postponed,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1950, pt. 2, p. 4. 10. Interview of Frank Wilkinson by Don Parson, Los Angeles, July 3, 1996. 11. Richard Neutra, “Report upon Inspection and Analysis of Chavez Ravine,” May 5, 1950, 8, Richard Neutra Collection (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 47; Thomas Hines, “Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism: The Battle of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles, 1949–1959,” Journal of Urban History 8 (February 1982): 132–33. 12. Hines, “Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism”; Richard Neutra, Elysian Park Heights: A Project of Urban Reconstruction, n.d., Richard Neutra Collection, Box 47; Nicholas Cirino to Neutra and Alexander, April 25, 1951, Richard Neutra Collection, Box 47. 13. Holland quoted in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, Hearings on Investigation of Public Housing Activities in Los Angeles, 83rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OfWce, May 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 1953), 414; Eisner oral history transcript, 67, 70. 14. “Four Hundred Protest Housing for Chavez Ravine,” Los Angeles Mirror, April 26, 1951, 6; Bauman and O’Dwyer quoted in “Home Owners Protest Chavez Ravine Project; Vets, Church, Unions Favor Slum Clearance,” Los Angeles Examiner, April 27, 1951; Hahn quoted in “400 Jam Hearing, Blast Housing Plan,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1951, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; “Alcorada audencia en el Caso de Palo Verde,” La Opinión, April 27, 1951, 8. 15. “Homeowners in ‘Sitdown Strike’ at Bowron OfWce,” Los Angeles Examiner, May 11, 1951; “Una huelga de ‘sentados’ en la oWcina de Bowron,” La Opinión, May 12, 1951, 8. 16. Baus oral history transcript, 43; “The Chavez Area,” Bertha Withers to Los Angeles Times, Bertha Withers, “The Chavez Area,” letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4. 17. “Settlement Losing Battle for Its Life,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1951, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2. 18. “Complaint,” “Interlocutory Judgement,” Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Mosier M. Meyer, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 584912 (1952); Wilkinson interview, June 26, 1996; “Hit Chavez Ravine Plan,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, August 28, 1952, A12; McGinnis quoted in “Charge CHA Aide ‘Works for Reds,’” Los

Notes to Chapter 6

257

Angeles Mirror, September 2, 1952, 6, 18; “Bowron to Testify on Housing Cut,” People’s World, September 10, 1952, 3; “Bowron Admits, ‘No Change in Public Housing Plans,’” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 11, 1952, B2. 19. Transcript of Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Mosier M. Meyer, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 584912, September 16–17, 1952, Frank Wilkinson Papers, unprocessed material; “CHA Blocks 4 Councilmen as Witnesses at Land Trial, Los Angeles Examiner, September 17, 1952; “Bowron Initiating ‘Reds in Housing’ Probe,” Los Angeles Sentinel, September 18, 1952, A1, A3; “Landlords Lose LA Housing Fight,” People’s World, September 23, 1952, 3; “Interlocutory Judgement,” “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law,” “Final Order of Condemnation,” Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Mosier M. Meyer, et al., Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 584912 (1952). 20. “Plans for Huge New Park in Chavez Ravine Outlined,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1953, pt. 2, pp. 1, 2; “Park to Bloom in Blighted Area,” Los Angeles Mirror, October 15, 1953, 7; “Habrá parques en Rose Hills y Chávez Ravine,” La Opinión, October 18, 1953, pt. 2, 1; Holland quoted in “Los Angeles May Get Zoo, Park, Golf Courses on Housing Sites,” Journal of Housing 11 (January 1954): 12; Roybal quoted in “Golf Poor Substitute for Homes,” People’s World, May 13, 1954, 3, 6. 21. “Interlocutory Judgement of Condemnation,” Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Margarita Lopez, et al., Los Angeles Superior Court No. 586,229 (1953); “Complaint,” Manuel Arechiga and Avrana Arechiga v. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 619,348 (1953); “Chavez Ravine Folk Defy Ouster,” Los Angeles Examiner, October 5, 1953. 22. Veterans Affairs and Public Housing Committee and Finance Committee to City Council, May 12, 1954, Council File 59,200; Ordinance 105,801, Council File 59,200 (sup. 3). 23. Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); John Anson Ford, Thirty Explosive Years in Los Angeles County (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1961), 201. 24. Interview of Kenneth Hahn by Don Parson, Los Angeles, April 27, 1997; Poulson oral history transcript, 200, 264, 266, 338, 358; Rosalind Wiener Wyman, “‘It’s a Girl’: Three Terms on the Los Angeles City Council, 1953–1965,” 1980, transcript (Regional Oral History OfWce, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley), 32, 75, 88–90; Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: The Story of the “Los Angeles Times,” Its Publishers, and Their InXuence on Southern California (New York: Putnam, 1977), 268; Cary Henderson, “Los Angeles and the Dodger War, 1957–1962,” Southern California Quarterly 62 (Fall 1980): 261–89;

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Notes to Chapter 6

Robert Miller, “Baseball, Politics, and Urban Renewal: The Dodgers Move to Los Angeles,” Perspectives 17 (1990): 28–31; Poulson quotation from Norris Poulson, “The Untold Story of Chavez Ravine,” Los Angeles Magazine 3 (April 1962), 15, 16. 25. “Chavez Ravine Fact Book,” April 9, 1962, John Holland Papers, Box 9, Folder 2; Hahn, “you can have it . . . ,” from Hahn interview, April 27, 1997; Poulson oral history transcript, 338; Poulson quotation from Poulson, “The Untold Story of Chavez Ravine,” 15; Hahn, “when O’Malley saw . . . ,” from Kenneth Hahn, Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles: The Story of How the Dodgers Came West (Los Angeles, c. 1988). 26. Ordinance 110,204, October 7, 1957, Council File 78,067; Carlton Williams, “Dodgers’ Shift Voted by Council,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1957, pt. 1, pp. 1, 4; Fowler Jones, Chavez Ravine Facts, April 29, 1958, Council File 84,704; Roybal interview, October 10, 1996. 27. “Modern Rome’s Coliseum CruciWxium” is the title of a poem sent to Councilman Roybal: “Where Goith Thou, Miss Charity? / To Hell Sir, We Was Told, / Saint Peter Has A Toll Gate Now, / And I Have Got No Gold. / He Gave My Home to Dodgers, / Down In Chavez Ravine, / And Told Me I Must Go To Hell / To Get My Body Clean.” Artel Lindlea to Roybal, May 12, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; Poulson oral history transcript, 345, 349; “Public Housing and the Brooklyn Dodgers,” Frontier 8 (June 1957): 7. 28. Baus oral history transcript, 96; Ross oral history transcript, 283; “Prop. B Won in 9 of 15 Districts,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1958, pt. 3, p. 26. 29. Ruben v. City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Superior Court No. 687210 (1958); “Memorandum Decision,” Kirschbaum v. Housing Authority, Los Angeles Superior Court No. 699077 (1958); City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court, 51 C.2d 423; 333 P.2d 745 (1959); Ruben v. City of Los Angeles, 51 C.2d 851; 337 P.2d 825 (1959). 30. Arechiga v. Housing Authority, 159 C.A.2d 657; 324 P.2d 973 (1958); Housing Authority v. Lopez, 159 C.A.2d 661; 324 P.2d 976 (1958); Roger Arnebergh to Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga, March 10, 1959, Council File 90,234 (sup. 6); Manuel L. Aréchiga, “Chavez Resident,” in “The Mailbag,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, May 6, 1959, pt. 1, p. 17. 31. Quotation from “Chavez Ravine Family Evicted—Melee Erupts,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 1, 3; “Sacan de Chavez Ravine a la última familia,” La Opinión, May 9, 1959, 1, 7. 32. “Sacan de Chavez Ravine a la última familia,” La Opinión, 1, 7; Peter Pitchess, May 13, 1959, “Return of Writ of Possession,” County of Los Angeles, Sheriff’s Department, Exhibit E, Brief for Plaintiffs, Arechiga v. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 183 Cal. App.2d 835, 7 Cal. Rptr. 338 (2nd Dist. 1960) (Civ. No. 24,140), Bernard E. Witkin State

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259

Law Library of California; Poulson, “The Untold Story of Chavez Ravine,” 14–15. 33. Clare Bernarding to City Council, May 10, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachment); Mrs. R. D. Kechler to City Council, May 8, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachment); Mrs. Tim Kission to City Council, [misdated] April 8, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachment); Frances Middleton to City Council, n.d., Council File 90,234 (attachment); Save Chavez Ravine for the People Committee to Mayor Norris Poulson, May 12, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 34. “An anonymous friend” to Holland, May 10, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; William R. Reed to City Council, May 11, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachment); George Nelson to City Council, May 11, 1959, emphasis in original, Council File 90,234 (attachment). 35. June 5 and 16, 1959, letters from E. M. Cecer to Roybal, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; Lee Hennessy to the editor of Life magazine, n.d. (cc to City Council), Council File 90,234 (attachment); Charles M. Stahl to City Council, May 13, 1959, Council File 90,234; unsigned to City Council, May 9, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachment). 36. “City Council Holds Stormy Session on Chavez Evictees,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1959, pt. 3, pp. 1, 3, 30; Wyman oral history transcript, 87; Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga to City of Los Angeles, Claim for Damages, May 11, 1959, Council File 90,568. 37. Minutes of the City Council, May 11, 1959, Council File 90,234; “Statement Made by Roger Arnebergh to City Council,” May 11, 1959, 8, Council File 90,568 (sup. 6). 38. Poulson oral history transcript, 367; “Mayor Booed at Chavez Quiz,” Los Angeles Examiner, May 12, 1959; “City Council Holds Stormy Session on Chavez Evictees,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1959, pt. 3, pp. 1, 3, 30. 39. Wyman oral history transcript, 87; “Chavez Tent Family Owns 7 Other Homes,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, May 13, 1959, pt. 1, p. 1; “Evicted Chavez Family Owners of 11 Houses,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2, 4; “Sensacional sesgo desde caso Aréchiga,” La Opinión, May 14, 1959, 1, 7. 40. C. R. Moody, “Homes Owned,” in “The Mailbag,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, May 16, 1959, pt. 1, p. 9; “L.A. OfWcials Comment on Chavez Case,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 2, 31; Ed Novak to Dear Sirs . . . , n.d., John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; Roybal on the Aréchiga property is quoted in Rodolfo F. Acuña, A Community under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945–1975 (Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 1984), 76–77; “El

260

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caso Aréchiga causa en el concillio otra tormenta,” La Opinión, May 15, 1959, 1, 7. 41. Poulson quoted in “Mayor Bitterly Flays ‘Rigged’ Chavez Pleas,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 1, 4; Holtzendorff to City Council, May 13, 1959, Council File 90,234 (sup. 1); “Tears on the Picture Tube,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1959, pt. 2, p. 4. 42. “Arechigas Quitting Campsite,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, May 18, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 1, 2; “Arechigas Pull Down Tent and Leave Chavez,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1959, pt. 1, pp. 2, 12; “Cedieron los Aréchiga,” La Opinión, May 19, 1959, 1; City Clerk to Manuel and Avrana Aréchiga, August 13, 1959, Council File 90,568. 43. “Complaint,” “Judgement,” Manuel Arechiga and Avrana Arechiga v. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 723,253 (1959); Manuel Arechiga, et al. v. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, et al., 183 C.A. 2d 835; 7 Cal.Rptr. 338 (1960); Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Arechiga, 203 C.A.2d 159; 21 Cal.Rptr. 464 (1962). 44. “Fighting L.A. Dodgers,” Los Angeles Herald and Express, September 17, 1959, B2; Neil Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 281; “At Last: The New Ball Park,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1962, pt. 2, p. 4. 45. Elvin Poe to Roybal, May 12, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 46. Alan Wolfe, America’s Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (Boston: South End Press, 1981), 91. 47. Wilma Merrill to County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, October 1, 1957, in Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; Wilma Merrill to Roybal, December 10, 1957, in Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 48. Joseph Babando to Roybal, May 10 and 29, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; unsigned to City Council, May 9, 1959, Council File 90,234 (attachments). 49. Ernest Evans to Roybal, December 11, 1957, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 50. H. A. Garza to Roybal, May 13, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; Mrs. Arthur Stein to Holland, n.d., John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; Paul S. Goen to Holland, May 14, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; Mrs. L. Brown to Roybal, May 19, 1959, emphasis in original, in Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 51. Don Parson, “Organized Labor and the Housing Question: Public Housing, Suburbanization, and Urban Renewal,” Society and Space: Environment and Planning D 2 (1984): 75–86; “A Working Urban Renewal

Notes to Chapter 6

261

Program,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1957, pt. 3, p. 4; Trinidad Flores to Holland, May 11, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; J. J. Christian, secretary of the Los Angeles Building Trades Council, to Roybal, September 27, 1957, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine; letters and telegrams from Trinidad Flores to Roybal, in Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 52. Mr. Louis J. Cyado to Holland, May 9, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; Ken Liebhardt, Voter, to Holland, May 9, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions; Alex Bradford to Leslie Claypool, September 2, 1959, emphasis in original, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 53. Edmund McKanna to Holland, May 19, 1959, John Holland Papers, Box 8, Folder: Chavez Ravine Evictions. 54. First quotation from “‘Resettle Elsewhere,’ Says Mayor, If You Don’t Want Urban Renewal!” Eastside Sun, January 8, 1959, 1, 2; second quotation from “Broadcast by Mayor Norris Poulson—Station KFI,” October 25, 1959, Edward Roybal Collection, Box 6, Folder: Chavez Ravine. 55. John C. Bollens and Grant B. Geyer, Yorty: Politics of a Constant Candidate (PaciWc Palisades, Calif.: Palisades Publishers, 1973), 4; Borough oral history transcript, 231. 56. Ed Ainsworth, Maverick Mayor: A Biography of Sam Yorty of Los Angeles (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966); Bollens and Geyer, Yorty. 57. Samuel Yorty, “Ask the Mayor: Samuel Yorty,” transcript of interview by Hynda Rudd, 1987 (Oral History Program, University of California at Berkeley), 106; Bollens and Geyer, Yorty, 122–24, 129; Yorty quoted in Carlton Williams, “Poulson to Undergo Health Check to Silence ‘Whispering Campaign,’” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1961, sec. F, pp. 1, 8. 58. “For Mayor,” Los Angeles Examiner, April 2, 1961, pt. 1, p. 12; Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 360; Los Angeles Democrat is quoted on 154 of Charles George Mayo, “The 1961 Mayoralty Election in Los Angeles: The Political Party in a Nonpartisan Election” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1963). 59. Poulson, “The Untold Story of Chavez Ravine,” 15, 17, 50; Charles G. Mayo, “The 1961 Mayoralty Election in Los Angeles: The Political Party in a Nonpartisan Election,” Western Political Quarterly 17 (1964): 325–37; “There’s Nothing Left but Hope,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1961, pt. 3, p. 4. 60. The April 15, 1961, editorial of People’s World was reproduced in toto on 124–25 in Mayo’s dissertation, “The 1961 Mayoralty Election” (I could not Wnd it archived); “From Texas to L.A.,” People’s World, June 10, 1961, 8; “Yorty Victory Branded by ‘Default,’” People’s World, June 10, 1961, 2; B. B. of Los Angeles, “Election in L.A.,” letter to the editor, People’s World, July 15, 1961, 8.

262

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61. Bollens and Geyer, Yorty, 211, 142; Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 365. Conclusion 1. Leonard Freedman, “Group Opposition to Public Housing” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1959), 334–37, 346–47. 2. Harry Conn, “Housing: A Vanishing Vision,” New Republic 125 (July 30, 1951): 12–13; “Public Housing ‘Battle’ Hits in Washington, the States, Local Communities,” Journal of Housing 9 (March 1952): 79–80, 94; Leonard Freedman, Public Housing: The Politics of Poverty (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 43, 45, 53. 3. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 82, 84. 4. Bryant interview, August 20, 1982; John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 118, 137, 207. Bryant had invited his friend from the CHA, Oliver Haskell, to interview for a position as a housing manager for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. An investigation of Haskell’s background by the chief of police gave impetus to the Red Scare. Haskell was told, following a telephone call from the Philadelphia Housing Authority to Howard Holtzendorff for a reference, that Holtzendorff had “slit your throat from ear to ear.” Haskell interview, October 3, 1982. 5. Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 202; Devereux Bowly Jr., The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago, 1895–1976 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 84. See also Robert Gruenberg, “Trumbull Park: Act II: Elizabeth Wood Story,” Nation 179 (September 18, 1954): 230–32; D. Bradford Hunt, “What Went Wrong with Public Housing in Chicago? A History of the Chicago Housing Authority, 1933–1982” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 2000). 6. Gwinn Amendment, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., ch. 578 (July 5, 1952), U.S. Statutes at Large 66:403; Marilynn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 230. 7. Chicago Housing Authority v. Blackman, 122 N.E.2d 522 (1954); Lawson v. Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee, 70 N.W.2d 605 (1955); Rudder v. United States, 226 F.2d 51 (1955); ACLU Weekly Bulletin 1686, “Legal Campaign to Invalidate Gwinn Amendment Scores Success,” February 21, 1955, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California Collection (Special Collections, University of California at Los Angeles), Box 7, Folder 1.

Notes to Conclusion

263

8. Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee et al. v. Lawson et ux., certiorari denied, 350 U.S. No. 354 (November 7, 1955); “U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Review Gwinn Decision,” Journal of Housing 12 (December 1955): 428; Kutcher v. Housing Authority of the City of Newark, 20 N.J. 181, 119 A.2d 1 (1955); Peters v. New York City Housing Authority, 147 N.Y.S.2d 859 (1955); “New York and New Jersey High Courts Declare Gwinn Amendment Ineffective,” Journal of Housing 13 (January 1956): 21; Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles v. Cordova, et al., certiorari denied, 350 U.S. No. 628 (February 27, 1956); “Gwinn Amendment Is Dead,” Journal of Housing 13 (August–September 1956): 279; “Staff Counsel Information Report No. 3, Re: Gwinn Amendment,” October 23, 1956, ACLU Collection, Box 6, Folder 11. 9. Freedman, Public Housing, 55; Housing Act of 1954, 83d Cong., 2nd sess., ch. 649 (August 2, 1954), U.S. Statutes at Large 68:590–648; “Housing Act of 1954,” Journal of Housing 11 (August–September 1954): 261ff.; Nathaniel S. Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis since 1930 (New York: Universe Books, 1973), 110ff. 10. Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993); John T. Metzger, “Rebuilding Harlem: Public Housing and Urban Renewal, 1920–1960,” Planning Perspectives 9 (1994): 270; Robert B. Fairbanks, Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and the Community Development in Cincinnati, 1890–1960 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 148, 172, 175; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 214, 238; Ronald H. Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 70; Michael P. Weber, Don’t Call Me Boss: David Lawrence, Pittsburgh’s Renaissance Mayor (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 255–76, 395–97. 11. Freedman, Public Housing, 53, 54; J. Paul Mitchell, “Historical Overview of Direct Federal Housing Assistance,” in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy and Research, 1985), 187–206. 12. “L.A. Area Homes Need Still Acute, Director Claims,” Los Angeles Mirror, March 11, 1949, 25; Hal Humphrey, “Local FHA Hangs Up New Housing Record,” Los Angeles Mirror, April 2, 1949, 31. Richard O. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966), 117. 13. Don Parson, “Organized Labor and the Housing Question: Public Housing, Suburbanization, and Urban Renewal,” Society and Space: Environment and Planning D 2 (1984): 75–86. 14. Edward Robert Long, “Loyalty Oaths in California, 1947–1952: The Politics of Anti-Communism” (PhD diss., University of California at San

264

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Diego, 1981), 275–78, 350–51; see Carl Morgen, “Destroying the California CIO Council,” in The Cold War against Labor, ed. Ann Fagan Ginger and David Christiano (Berkeley: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1987), 430–37. 15. “Low-Cost Housing Laugh,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 28, 1951, A8; “Private Housing Deserves Support,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 4, 1952, A8. 16. Thomas Joseph Sitton, “Urban Politics and Reform in New Deal Los Angeles: The Recall of Mayor Frank L. Shaw” (PhD diss., University of California at Riverside, 1983), 241; Poulson oral history transcript, 178. 17. G. Spencer Wice, “Bishop Challenged on Housing,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1952, pt. 2, p. 4; Bob Schuler to City Council, December 26, 1951, Council File 39,066 (attachments). 18. O’Connor to Bowron, June 26, 1952, emphasis in original, Fletcher Bowron Collection, Box 51, Folder: Memos & Misc. Letter re Housing; the relationship between Burns and McIntyre was brought to my attention by Michael Engh; Wilkinson interview, July 3, 1996. 19. IPP Statement of Policy on the May 26 Municipal Elections, May 7, 1953, Records of the Independent Progressive Party and Californians for Liberal Representation, Box 31, Folder 7. 20. Elizabeth Poe, “Spring Street Massacre,” Frontier 4 (July 1953): 23–24. 21. Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Big Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Carey McWilliams, Witch Hunt: The Revival of Heresy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), 21, emphasis in original. 22. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 92–93; Wilkinson interview, July 3, 1996. 23. McWilliams, Witch Hunt, 340; Frank Wilkinson, “FBI Crackdown on Opposition to HUAC,” in It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America, ed. Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1989), 268. 24. Minutes of the City Council, September 13, 1950, Council File 43,923, City Archives; “Councilmen Vote Red Registration, Los Angeles Daily News, September 13, 1950, 1, 4; Roybal’s comments to the City Council, September 13, 1950, “A week ago today . . .” (5 pages), in Edward Roybal Collection, Box 8, Folder: Communism; also in Council File 43,923. 25. Freedman, Public Housing, 162, 166. 26. Freedman, Public Housing, 166–70; Fritz Burns and his partner Ben Weingart realized $111,979 on the sale of their Chavez Ravine property to the construction of Dodger Stadium: “Chavez Land Purchase for Dodgers Ordered,” Los Angeles Examiner, July 22, 1959. 27. Freedman, Public Housing, 162; Don Parson, “‘The Darling of the

Notes to Appendix A

265

Town’s Neo-Fascists’: The Bombastic Political Career of Councilman Ed J. Davenport,” Southern California Quarterly 81 (Winter 1999): 500. 28. Harry Cleaver, Reading “Capital” Politically (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), is a very convincing outline of a political and working-class perspective that is referred to here; Antonio Negri, Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the “Grundrisse” (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1984), 188, emphasis in original. 29. Robert Goodman, After the Planners (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), 67. 30. Ruth M. Harmer, “Trick Play at City Hall: ‘Socialism’ and the New Los Angeles Housing Plan,” Frontier 6 (February 1955): 11–13. 31. Rodolfo F. Acuña, A Community under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945–1975 (Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 1984), 84; Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (1995) (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 213–27. 32. John H. Mollenkopf, “The Postwar Politics of Urban Development,” in Marxism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban Political Economy, ed. William K. Tabb and Larry Sawers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 141–42: “On a city-by-city basis, the simple correlation between city expenditures spent on renewal and how many riots occurred between 1964–1968 for 100 large cities was 0.352. While this is admittedly crude . . . it is nonetheless suggestive.” Mara Alexandra Marks, “Shifting Ground: Bureaucratic Politics and Redevelopment in Los Angeles” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1999), 136–37. 33. “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” is the title of a song by Phil Ochs; Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), ch. 10; Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968: The Great Refusal (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 5. 34. Daniel Seligman, “The Enduring Slums,” Fortune 56 (December 1957): 144–49. 35. Horne, Fire This Time; Frank Wilkinson, “And Now the Bill Comes Due,” Frontier 16 (October 1965): 10–12. 36. Robert Alexander to Don Parson, January 13, 1982, in possession of Don Parson. Appendix A 1. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, Hearings on Investigation of Public Housing Activities in Los Angeles, 83rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OfWce, May 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 1953), 326–28, emphasis added.

266

Notes to Appendix A

2. See Jerold Simmons, “The Origins of the Campaign to Abolish HUAC, 1956–1961: The California Connection,” Southern California Quarterly 64, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 141–57; Wilkinson v. United States, 365 U.S. 399 (1961). The First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievance.” 3. Wilkinson v. United States, 365 U.S. 399 (1961). 4. “Frank Wilkinson: Resume of ACLU-Sponsored Litigation Re: First Amendment,” (Los Angeles: First Amendment Foundation, n.d.); March 4, 1964, FBI memo, mimeo from First Amendment Foundation, Los Angeles; Dorothy Townsend, “FBI Failed to Warn of Death Plot, ACLU Says,” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1983. 5. Frank Wilkinson, et al. v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al., U.S. District Court, Central District of California, 633 F.Supp. 336 (1986); Kim Murphy, “Surveillance Case Sheds Light on McCarthy Era,” Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1987, pt. 1, pp. 1, 3, 40, 41; Richard Criley, The FBI v. the First Amendment (Los Angeles: First Amendment Foundation, 1990); Anthony Summers, OfWcial and ConWdential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993), 451 (ch. 32, n. 1). 6. Robert Reinhold, “New Evidence in a Landmark Case,” New York Times, February 24, 1989; Wilkinson v. United States, 774 F.Supp. 1360 (1991); Liza Kaufman, “A Hot Issue from the Cold War Makes Its Way to 11th Circuit,” Fulton County Daily Report, March 27, 1992. 7. Alexander oral history transcript, 525.

Index

Aaron, Henry, 192 Abrams, Charles, 99, 229n.49, 237n.55 ACLU, 60, 126, 190, 207 Acuña, Rodolfo F., 199, 259n.40, 265n.31 ADA, 5, 90 Adams, George J., 34 Adamson, Ernie, 96 Adler, Pat, 250n.22 affordability, crisis of, xiv AFL. See American Federation of Labor (AFL) AFL-CIO support of Poulson’s 1961 candidacy, 184 African Americans: black politics of 1960s, 199, 200; Bowron 1949 reelection campaign and, 101; Chicago public housing siting controversy and, 189; division over public housing in 1950s, 193; population increases in Los Angeles (1940–1946), 56–60; project life for, 97; as proponents of public housing, 38–39; in public housing during war, 69, 70–71; racial tensions and inXux of, xii–xiii; Rea’s appointment to CRA and, 142; as renewal displacees, 199; socialism as nonissue to, 94–95. See also race

Ain, Gregory, xi Ainsworth, Ed, 261n.56 Alder, Pat, 147 Aldrich, Lloyd, 101 Alexander, Robert E., xiii, 8, 30, 35, 90, 117–18, 124, 142, 144, 200, 208, 210, 214n.10, 243n.34, 249n.10, 249n.14, 251n.27, 255n.5–6, 265n.36; Bunker Hill redevelopment and, 149; Elysian Park Heights project design, 167–68; redevelopment plants for Chavez Ravine, 165–66 Aliso Apartments, 116, 132 Aliso Village, 7, 32, 34, 40, 45, 51, 68; everyday life in, 53–54; occupancy by race, 70; soldiers and defense workers in, 46–47; Tenants’ Council at, 51 Allen, Don A., 120, 244n.40 Allen, Fay, 39 Allen, Robert S., 86, 233n.24 Allen, Sam Houston, 204 Alley, Walter Wright, 19, 20, 29 Alternative Redevelopment Plan, Bunker Hill, 156 Altgeld Club of Communist Party, 205 American City, The, 142, 160 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 60, 126, 190, 207

267

268 American Federationist, 15 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 15; Building Trades Council, 28, 79; California AFL, 139; postwar plans of, 63–65; as public housing proponent, 33, 37 American Friends Society, 79 American Institute of Architects, Southern California chapter, 151 American Jewish Congress, 90 American Legion, 79, 88 American Red Cross, 79, 83 Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), 5, 90 American Veterans Committee (AVC), 79, 80, 87–88, 90; “Master Housing Plan,” 88 American Youth for Democracy, 204 Amity Compton, xi Anderson, David, 97 Andre, Carol, 121, 123, 124 Ann Street project, 26, 29 anti-Communist crusade, xiii–xiv, xvi, 6. See also Cold War; Red Scare Apartment Association of Los Angeles County (Apartment House Association of Los Angeles, Apartment House Owners Association), 16–17, 25, 28, 105, 154 apartment buildings: introduction of, ix Apartment Managers and Owners Association, 65 architects: modernist, in California, xi; of projects constructed under 1937 Housing Act, 34–35; of projects constructed under 1949 Housing Act, 132; role of left-leaning, 7–8 architectural design principles embodied by public housing, 6–9 Aréchiga, Manuel and Avrana, 170–71, 173–79, 258n.30, 259n.36; eviction of, 174–79; writ of possession of property of, 174, 179 Arnebergh, Roger, 177, 258n.30 Arroyo, Luis Leobardo, 226n.23 Ask the Dust (Fante), 147 Assembly Relief Investigating Committee on Subversive Activities (“little Dies” committee), 235n.41 Augustain, Victoria, 174, 178 Austin, John C., 34

Index Austin, J. Win, 106 Avalon Gardens, 32, 35, 70 AVC. See American Veterans Committee Avila, Eric, 257n.23 Babando, Joseph, 180, 260n.48 Babcock, Henry A., 150, 155, 251n.29, 253n.43 Baisden, Richard, 33, 106, 222n.56, 238n.61 Baker, Earle D., 106 Balter, Harry G., 37 Balter, Michael, 210 Banning Homes, 49, 51, 61, 92; meeting over LAPD beating death of S. Jones, 125–26; occupancy by race, 71 Barrett, Edward L., Jr., 94, 235n.41 Baruch, Dorothy W., 226n.24 baseball franchise, major league, 171–72; Dodger Stadium and, 172, 173–80 Basilone, John, 86 Basilone Homes, 82, 84–86, 92, 97 Bass, Charlotta, 56, 59, 88, 226n.24, 230n.54 Bataan Park, 49, 71 Batler, Michael, 255n.4 Bauer, Catherine, x, xi, 16, 17–18, 22, 63, 143–44, 216n.7, 216n.10, 249n.13 Bauman, John F., 63, 189, 229n.43, 229n.45, 256n.14, 262n.4 Baumann, G. C., 168 Baus, Herbert M., 114, 127, 169, 173, 210, 242n.24, 246n.56, 256n.16 Baus and Ross public relations Wrm, 110, 114, 127, 169, 173 Bayor, Ronald H., 263n.10 Beatty, David F., 250n.18 Beaudry, Prudent, 147 Beavers, George A., Jr., 101, 123, 130, 131, 247n.65 Beckett, Weldon, 35 Beckler, John, 253n.42 Beebe, James L., 113, 114, 151, 241n.22–23 Beelman, Claud, 35 Bellush, Jewel, 143, 249n.12 Belton, William, 94, 236n.43 Bennett, Charles B., 142, 249n.10 Bennett, G. Vernon, 37, 39, 106 Benny, Jack, 83

Index Bergen, Bob, 238n.3, 250n.19 Bernarding, Clare, 174–76, 259n.33 better world: initiative to make, 1, 4, 5, 6, 43, 200 Biniasz, Dave, 210, 226n.25 Birch, Eugenie Ladner, 15, 215n.6, 216n.7 Biscaluz, Eugene, 40–41 Black, Hugo, 206 “black power,” 199. See also African Americans Blanford, John, 228n.41 Blighted! (1946 pamphlet), 140 blighted areas: deWned by CRA, 140; as object of urban redevelopment, 140. See also slum clearance Bloom, Murray Teigh, 250n.21 B’nai B’rith, 79–80 Bock, H., 240n.11 Bollens, John C., 183, 185, 261n.55–57, 262n.61 Bookchin, Murray, 9, 215n.16 Borough, Reuben W., 19, 39, 88, 94, 210, 235n.43 Bowly, Devereux, Jr., 189, 262n.5 Bowron, Fletcher, xii, 25, 38, 39, 122, 183, 194, 218n.23, 218n.25, 221n.46, 224n.3, 228n.35, 230n.2, 231n.10, 238n.61–62, 239n.9, 240n.13–16, 241n.18, 241n.20, 241n.22–23, 242n.27, 242n.29, 244n.42, 246n.57–58, 247n.60, 247n.63, 248n.2, 248n.6, 249n.8–9, 249n.15, 251n.26, 251n.30; Bunker Hill redevelopment, 149, 150–51; Burke incident and, 96–97; changing racial composition of city and, 59–60, 69; Chavez Ravine redevelopment and, 120–21, 169, 170; conference on housing situation for minorities (1943), 57; Davenport’s resolution to rescind public housing contract and, 109–10; on defense workers, 46; election of 1938, 20–21; housing conference (May 20–24, 1952), 111–13; initial stand on public housing, 22–23; as lame-duck mayor, “deathbed appointments” of, 129–31, 134; mayoral race of 1953, 127–30, 191, 193, 194–95; political abandonment by the Left and

269 liberals, 100–101; postwar housing crisis and, 76, 77, 78–79, 89, 92; Proposition B of 1952 and, 111–16; reelection campaign (1949), 101; reelection platform (1945), 69–72; revised public housing program (1952), 115–16; support of public housing program, 29–30; on urban renewal, 138, 140, 141–42, 144–45; veterans’ housing and, 82, 83 Boyd, Eugene V., 221n.48 Boyd, Gene, 220n.39, 221n.45 Boyle Heights, 198 Boynoff, Sara, 94, 235n.42 Bradford, Alex, 182, 261n.52 Breines, Wini, 265n.33 Bridge Corporation, xiv Broadway Department Store, 151 Brock, Milton J., Sr., 142 Brodine, Virginia, 205 “Bronzeville,” 56–57 Brooklyn Dodgers: Dodger Stadium and, 172, 173–80; relocation to Los Angeles, 172 Browder, Earl, 3, 213n.5 Brown, Edmund G., 121, 244n.43 Brown, Mrs. L., 181, 260n.50 Bryant, Drayton S., 51, 61, 144, 189, 225n.12, 228n.36, 249n.14, 251n.27, 255n.5–7, 262n.4; Bunker Hill redevelopment and, 149; on CHA, 52; Proposition 14 and, 91; redevelopment plans for Chavez Ravine, 165–66 “Build America Better” campaign (NAREB), 146 Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Wright), ix Bukowski, Charles, 147, 250n.23 Bunker Hill, 10; Alternative Redevelopment Plan, 156; Babcock’s engineering report on land use combinations for, 155; court cases challenging urban renewal project (1959), 160– 61; current status of redevelopment, 162; federal funding for, 152–53; initial redevelopment proposals, 149–51; in literary terms of 1920s and 1930s, 147–48; location of, 138; as Los Angeles acropolis, 151–62;

270 rehabilitation and conservation proposal, 154–55; as residential showcase of 1880s, 147; residents’ support of public housing program, 148–49; transformation of, 147–62 Bunker Hill Democratic Club, 148 Bunker Hill Village Coordinating Council on Housing, 148–49 Bureau of Right of Way and Land, 171 Burge, Henry C., 132 Burke, Libby, 96–97 Burke, Sidney, 96–97 Burnham, Daniel, 9 Burns, Bob, 80 Burns, Fritz B., 67, 91, 110, 124, 146, 154, 170, 194, 197, 250n.21, 252n.41, 264n.26 Burns, Fritz Patrick, 124 Burns, Hugh M., 94, 121 Buyer, Franklin P., 24 Buzell, J. W., 37 C. G. Willis and Sons, Inc., 169 Caldecott, Reverend, 204 Caldwell, Orville, 59–60, 227n.34 California: awareness of possibilities of public housing in, x–xii California AFL, 139 California Chamber of Commerce, 139 California CIO, 139 California CIO Council, 90; leftdominated, ousting of, 193 California Commission of Immigration and Housing, 164 California Democratic Council (CDC), 183 California Eagle, 1, 55, 59, 60, 62, 68, 86, 95, 101, 212 California Housing Authority: initiative for, 90 California Medical Association, 55 California Physicians’ Service (CPS), 55 California Real Estate Association, 139 California State Court of Appeal: Aréchigas’ petition for hearing with, 173–74, 179 California State Federation of Labor, 90 California State Reconstruction and ReEmployment Commission, 76, 89, 140 California Supreme Court: CHA brief against Council Wled with, 116–17;

Index reversal of judgment against Dodger contract, 173; writ of mandate over public housing contract, 110–11 California Un-American Activities Committee (CUAC), 62, 93–94, 96, 235n.41; investigation of alleged Communist inWltration of CHA, 117, 121–25; Yorty as chairman of, 183 Candlestick Cove (San Francisco), xi, xii Canoga Park, 198 Capeci, Dominic, Jr., 228n.39 Capehart, Homer E., 153 Carlson, Oliver, 69, 230n.58 Carpenters Local Union, 108 Carr, Edwin, 89, 234n.30 Carrol, Walter, 58, 227n.31 Carter, Edward W., 142 Carter, Jesse W., 117 CASH, 110, 145 Catholic Church, 194 Catholic Interracial Council, 60, 79 Cecer, E. M., 176, 259n.35 Center, the: of Keynesian coalition, 3; pro-growth coalition and, 6 Central Avenue district: conference on housing in (1938), 39 central business district (CBD): Bunker Hill as impediment to expansion of, 148. See also corporate modernism CHA. See City Housing Authority Chabot Terrace (Richmond), xi, xii Chall, Malca, 210 Challenge of Housing, The (Post), 42, 53 Chamber of Commerce, 105, 110; California, 139; U.S., 16, 98 Chandler, Norman, 100, 126–27, 185 Chandler, Raymond, 147–48, 250n.23 Channel Heights, xi, xii, 48, 51, 69, 92; Burke incident and, 96, 97; everyday life in, 53; nurseries at, 54; occupancy by race, 70 Chase, Laura, 223n.59, 234n.36 Chavez, Julian, 164 Chavez, Vincent, 98 Chavez Ravine, xiii, xiv, 135, 144; Communist Party as presence in, 166; evictions from, 164, 173–80; history of, 164; lawsuit, 118–21; location of, 138; modernism and party politics in, 180–83; population of, 165; postwar community, 164–65; proposed

Index Elysian Park Heights public housing project in, 166, 167–68; report on city’s housing needs, 89–90; residents’ initiative as model for rise of movement politics, 198–99; as site for Dodger Stadium, 172, 173–80; as site for redevelopment and, 165–66; substandard dwellings in, 165; survey of slums or blighted areas, 140; transformation of land use in, 10, 163–86 CHC. See Citizens’ Housing Council Chesbro, Ray L., 108–9, 237n.51 Chicago: public housing siting controversy in, 189 Chicago Housing Authority, 189, 190 Chicago School of urban sociology, 4 “Chicano power,” 199 child care. See day care; nurseries Christian, John J., 37, 182, 261n.51 Christiansen, Parley Parker, 26–27, 32, 40–41, 53, 88 CIO. See Congress of Industrial Organizations Cirino, Nicholas, 168 Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Disposition of War Housing, 77 Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing/ and Planning, 27–28, 29, 38, 78 Citizens Committee to Preserve American Freedoms, 207 Citizens for Slum Clearance, 114 Citizens’ Housing Council (CHC), 28–29, 37–38, 52, 79, 88, 151; conference (1947), 80; founding of, 37; guided tours of slums, 92–93; reinvigorated during postwar period, 79–80 Citron, Byron V., 204 City Council, 27, 29; ambiguous front of, 24–26; Bunker Hill redevelopment and, 153, 156–60; changing racial composition of city and, 57–59; Chavez Ravine lawsuit and, 119; commercial construction and, 87; Communist Registration Ordinance, 196; the courts and, 116–17; CRA conWrmed by, 141–43; Dodger contract approval, 172; endorsement of Wnal public housing program, 32; Finance Committee, 171; halving

271 public housing program, 131; hearings on Chavez Ravine evictions, 177–79; May 1939 municipal ballot, 33–37; 1949 public housing contract and, 101; ordinances strengthening municipal health and building regulations, 145; Planning Committee, 152, 154, 156; project siting and, 22, 104, 105; refusal to condemn segregation in housing, 69; revolt against public housing, 106–10; Veterans Affairs and Public Housing Committee, 171; veterans’ housing and, 84–85 City Health Department, 103 City Housing Authority (CHA), 21; allegations of Communist inWltration of, 117, 121–25, 203–8; annual report (1945), 72, 73; annual report (1948), 141; Aréchigas’ complaint against condemnation order of, 173–74, 179; Bunker Hill redevelopment and, 149; Burke incident and, 96–97; Chavez Ravine as public housing site, 166, 167–68; Chavez Ravine lawsuit and, 118–21; CHC and, 37–38; claim for damages against antihousing city councilmen, 116–17; condemnation and resettlement of Chavez Ravine residents, 169–70, 171; congressional investigation of (1953), 128–30; federal funding process and, 21–30; guided tours of slums, 92–93; hearing for CPC approval of Chavez Ravine site, 168; housing stock of (1955–1965), 213n.2; initial commissioners of, 19–20; lack of City Council support for, 31–32; loyalty oaths required by, 126; McCarthyism and, 6; postwar housing crisis and, 77; postwar site selection and, 103–6; public housing during World War II and, 47–53, 66–69; slum clearance accomplished by, 139; spirit of reform, 51; technical staff, 20; Veterans’ Program, 82–86; wartime activities, assessment of, 66–69; wartime objectives of, 47; Wilkinson Wle and allegations of Communist domination of, 203–8; Wilkinson’s August 29 suspension from, 118–19, 124

272 City Park Commission, 81 city park complex: Poulson’s plan for, 170, 171, 172 City Planning Department, 103, 104, 105 civil culture, planned, 7 Civil Rights Congress, 125, 204 Claypool, Leslie, 182, 261n.52 Cleaver, Harry, 265n.28 Cline, Paul, 217n.19 Cloward, Richard, 215n.2 clubs in public housing projects, 42 Coate, Roland E., 35 Cobb, Noel, 42–43, 224n.72 Cobo, Albert, 188 Codornices project (Berkeley), 190 CofWn, Tris, 98, 237n.54 Cohen, Mara Alexandra, 248n.3, 250n.21 Cold War, xiii, xvi, 2; fragmentation and nulliWcation of the Left and, 191, 193; Red-baiting of public housing, 93–95, 96, 195. See also Red Scare Cole, Albert, 135 Cole, Susan, 216n.7 Combs, Richard E., 123, 124, 125, 244n.44, 245n.48, 245n.50 commercialism: humanity overpowered by, 9–10 commercial land use, 87; Housing Act of 1954 and expansion of, 146, 147 Committee Against Socialist Housing (CASH), 110, 145 Committee for Central City Planning, 199 Committee for Home Protection, 91 Committee for Veterans’ Housing, 87 Committee of One Thousand Home Buyers (Veterans Home Buyers Association), 67, 87, 89, 204 Communism: Cold War and antiCommunist movement, xiii–xiv, xvi, 6; identiWcation of the Left with, 5; public housing equation with socialism and, 17, 103, 106, 108, 117–25, 188–91, 194–95 Communist Party, 39, 196; allegations of CHA’s inWltration by, 117, 121–25, 203–8; Altgeld Club of, 205; leftliberal popular front and, 3; mayoral election of 1953 and, 194; presence in Chavez Ravine, 166; as public

Index housing proponent, 33; Red-baiting of public housing and, 93–95; Unemployed Councils organized by, 13–14. See also People’s World Communist Political Association in Los Angeles, 68, 69 Communist Registration Ordinance, 196 Community Club, 42 Community Facilities Act (Lanham Act, 1940), 47, 77 community modernism, 2, 11, 139; architectural design principles, 6–9; characteristics of, 162; decline of, 10; as political target of Red Scare, 197; transformation to corporate modernism, 163–86 Community Redevelopment Act (1945), 139–40, 143, 160, 165 Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), 131, 139–40; autonomy of, 146–47; Bunker Hill redevelopment plan, 149–62; Wnancing projects, 146; powers of, 143; Resolution 48 for Bunker Hill urban renewal project, 152–53 Community Redevelopment Commission, 100 Community Services Organization, 90, 168 company towns, x Congressional Record, 106 Congress of American Women, 205 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), xii, 28, 68, 79, 90; integration of public housing and, 60–61; Los Angeles Newspaper Guild, 38; Maritime Council, 61; Mexican Committee, 56; postwar plans of, 65–66; as public housing proponent, 33, 37; Shipbuilders Union, 61; veterans’ committee, 88 Conn, Harry, 188, 262n.2 Connelly, Phil, 38, 53, 66, 78, 142, 228n.37, 229n.50, 249n.9 Conser, Eugene P., 25 cooperation agreements, 21–22, 25; for Hunter Street and Mercury Avenue projects, 26–27, 28; for Ramona Village/Gardens, 22, 23, 24 Cordova v. Housing Authority, 190 Cornell, John, 238n.2

Index Corona, Bert, 40, 56 corporate modernism, 2, 198; Bunker Hill redevelopment revealing nature of, 155–56; commercial and monumental gloriWcation of central city, 9–10; commercial and property interests behind, 197; modern Los Angeles deWned by, 187; people adversely affected by, 164; Poulson and, 163–64; pro-growth coalition and urban renewal, 6, 11; shift toward, 137–62; transformation of Left’s vision of community modernism to vision of, 163–86; use of public housing, 162 Corregidor Park, 48 Corregidor Park Annexes, 48, 70 Council for Civic Unity, 204 Covington, Floyd, 57 CRA. See Community Redevelopment Agency Crail, Charles, Jr., 20 Criley, Richard, 266n.5 Criley, Theodore, Jr., 132 Criz, Albert, 132 Cronk, George P., 106, 116, 119, 128, 170, 243n.37, 246n.58 CUAC. See California Un-American Activities Committee Cuff, Dana, 233n.21, 236n.47 Culver City for Caucasians Committee, 58 Cunningham, Stephen, 28, 30, 31 Cyado, Louis J., 182, 261n.52 Dana Strand Annex, 49, 71 Dana Strand Village, 48, 51, 69, 92; occupancy by race, 70 Darwinism, geographic, 4 Davenport, Ed J., 78, 97, 101, 108, 113, 145, 170, 231n.7, 240n.11, 243n.34, 243n.37, 244n.39–41, 250n.17; CHA court claim and, 117; equation of socialism with public housing, 117; HUAC investigation of CHA, 119; on Proposition B, 114; resolution to rescind public housing contract, 109–10; reversal of public housing advocacy, 106; support of corporate modernism, 197; tirade in council meeting (Sept. 3, 1952), 119–20

273 Davies, Lloyd, 227n.26 Davies, Richard O., 192, 233n.24, 237n.55–57, 263n.12 Davis, John P., 39 Davis, Walter S., 34 Day, Dennis, 83 day care, 54, 65–66; postwar, 77–78 Debs, Ernest, 252n.41 defense economy, 46 defense workers, 46; housing projects for, xi–xii, 32, 33, 47; multiracial, 55–60. See also World War II, public housing during DeHogue, Mr., 58, 227n.31 Delaney, 239n.7 Democratic County Central Committee, 80 Democratic Party: demise of Keynesian left and, 10; New Deal Democrats, 33; populists of Roosevelt coalition vs. pro-growth coalition, 180–83; support of Poulson’s 1961 candidacy, 184; vital center liberals of, 5–6, 199–200. See also Left, the; leftliberal popular front; Roosevelt coalition democratic self-management: public housing as experience in, 53–55 demolition and revitalization grants, xv. See also slum clearance; urban redevelopment Department of Building and Safety, 113 Department of Housing and Urban Development, HOPE VI program, xv Department of Justice, 190 design principles embodied by public housing architecture, 6–9 Detroit Housing Commission: public housing proposed by, 188 Detroit race riots, 62 Diebold, M. E., 57, 227n.28 Disabled American Veterans (DAV), 79, 80 discrimination. See race; racism displacees: African American, 199; housing in redeveloped Chavez Ravine planned for, 165–66; Little Tokyo, 92. See also slum clearance Division of Defense Housing Coordination (DDHC), 66 Dixon, Elizabeth, 210, 236n.43

274 Dockweiler, Frederick C., 91, 110, 113, 145, 241n.21 Dodgers: relocation to Los Angeles, 172 Dodger Stadium, 163; opponents to, 173–80; referendum to approve contract, 173; transformation of Chavez Ravine into, 172, 173–80 Donovan, Richard, 239n.8, 239n.9 Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 40–41, 77, 78, 80, 231n.5, 232n.13 Douglass, Enid Hart, 210, 234n.36, 242n.24 Downey, Sheridan, xi Downtown Community Association (DCA), 152 “downtown machine” in 1961 mayoral election, 183–85 Doyle, Clyde, 78 Drake, C. R., 104, 105 Drake, Luz Minoz, 155, 252n.42 Eason, Geo. H., 240n.16 Easton, Carl Louis, 132 Eastside Sun, 212 Eberle, George J., 148, 250n.24 Eberts, Mike, 233n.21 Eccles, M. S., 215n.5 Eckbo, Garrett, xi, 144, 249n.14, 255n.6; redevelopment plans for Chavez Ravine, 165–66 Edwards, George, 188 Egan, John Taylor, 101, 240n.14 Eisen, P. A., 35 Eisenberg, Frances, 124, 125, 245n.50 Eisner, Simon, 142, 143, 168, 210, 238n.1, 249n.9, 249n.13 El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española (El Congreso Mexicano e Hispano Americano), 39–40, 56 elections. See municipal elections Elysian Park Heights, xiii, xiv, 116, 131, 135, 166, 167–70; cancellation of project, 170; Chavez Ravine lawsuit and, 118; properties condemned for, 171; protests against high-rises designed for, 168–70 Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, 205 emergency housing units, 79 Emergency Mothers’ Committee, 77

Index eminent domain, 140; power of, 14, 15; residential land taken for commercial purposes by, 160; resistance to proceedings, 104 Emme, Otto, 118, 119, 169–70 End Poverty in California: clubs, 18; Sinclair’s campaign, xi Engh, Michael E., 223n.58, 264n.18 Epic News (End Poverty in California clubs), 18 equivalent elimination policy, 137; Wagner Act clause, 22 Eram, K. M., 57, 227n.28 Esterman, William B., 205 Estrada Courts, 32, 35, 69; occupancy by race, 70 Estrada Courts Annexes, 48, 70 Estrada Courts Extension, 132 European-style social democratic practice of public housing, x, xi Evans, Ernest, 181, 260n.49 everyday life in projects, 40–43, 53–55, 95–98, 125–26 evictions: from CHA projects, 91–92; from Chavez Ravine for Dodger Stadium, 173–80; Freeway AntiEviction Committee, 78, 79, 80; loyalty oaths and, 126 Executive Order 9066, 56 Fagelson, Pearl, 205 Fairbanks, Robert B., 263n.10 Fair Deal, 6, 99, 102 Fante, John, 147, 250n.23 Fantl, Leota and Arnold, 96–97, 237n.50 Fariello, GrifWn, 223n.60, 245n.50 Faries, McIntyre, 111, 241n.19 Faxon, Robert E., 132 FBI, 207–8 federal funding, 21–30; for Bunker Hill redevelopment, 152–53; diminishment of, 27, 28–29, 32; to private war housing, 66; for veterans’ housing, 86; during World War II, 45, 66 Federal Housing Administration (FHA), x, 59, 156 federal public housing, x, xvi, 13–18 Federal Public Housing Authority (FPHA), 47, 86, 91–92

Index federal subsidies: socialism and, 110 Federal Works Agency, 47 Federation of the High Cost of Living, 19 Fefferman, Sarah, 121 feminists, material, 15 Fennell, Charles H., 20, 26, 29, 218n.23, 219n.35 Fernández, Esther, 32 FHA, x, 59, 156 Fickett Hollow project, 31 Fifth Amendment rights, 121, 206; Chavez Ravine lawsuit and, 118–19, 121; CUAC investigation of CHA and, 122–25 First Amendment, 266n.2; rights, 206, 207 First and San Pedro Tenants’ Committee, 92 Fishburn, John E., Jr., 20 Fitzgerald, Roy, 253n.45 Flewelling, Ralph C., 34 Flora, Molly, 155, 252n.42 Flores, Trinidad, 261n.51 Foder, Wm. A. G., 217n.17 Foley, Raymond, 116 Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth A., 215n.18, 264n.21 Ford, John Anson, 20, 25, 37, 60, 62, 80, 107–8, 171, 223n.59, 227n.27, 228n.39, 232n.12, 239n.9, 257n.23 Forrester, John, 92, 235n.39 Fortune, 199 Foster, Dorothy, 121 Foxman, Morris and Marie, 40 FPHA, 47, 86, 91–92 Freedman, Leonard, 188, 191, 196, 241n.22, 262n.1, 262n.2, 263n.9, 263n.11, 264n.25–27 “free enterprise” program, four-point, 146 Freeland, Richard M., 214n.8 Freeway Anti-Eviction Committee, 78, 79, 80 freeway program: evictions caused by, 78 Friedman, Joel, 251n.30 Friedman, Lawrence M., 215n.5 Friend, James R., 34, 132 Fritchman, Stephen, 204 Frontier magazine, 162, 173 Fuller, Helen, 75, 229n.49, 230n.1

275 funding for redevelopment projects, 145–46. See also federal funding Funigiello, Philip J., 224n.2, 229n.49 Furman, Stanley, 237n.58 Fuss, Oscar, 61, 228n.37 Gallegos de Hillary, Maria, 153, 252n.38 Gallion, Arthur B., 132 Garcia, Frank, 46–47 García, Mario T., 223n.66 Gardner, Virginia, 234n.34, 236n.46 Garza, H. A., 181, 260n.50 Gates, Lillian, 78, 231n.6 Gay, Earl C., 19, 24 Gelfand, Mark L., 146, 237n.55, 248n.5, 250n.20 geographic Darwinism, 4 Gerholz, Robert, 65, 229n.45 Gervasi, Frank, 233n.26 Geyer, Grant B., 183, 185, 261n.55–57, 262n.61 Gibson, John S., 114 Giulii, Nicola, 20, 21, 28, 38, 40–41, 86, 121, 217n.20, 225n.6, 237n.49, 243n.31, 244n.43 Gleason, 242n.28 Goen, Paul S., 181, 260n.50 Goetze, Sigfried, 37 Gold, David A., 3, 213n.4 Goldberg, Rose, 40 Golden West Lodge, 105 Goldman, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, 158–60 Goodman, Leo, 236n.45, 237n.54 Goodman, Robert, 265n.29 Goodwin, W. W., 32 Gordon, Wilbur, 55, 226n.20–21 Gottlieb, Robert, 100, 184, 185, 238n.60, 247n.62, 252n.38, 257n.24, 261n.58 Great Depression, 2, 148; housing conditions in Los Angeles during, 18–19; massive unemployment of, 13, 14; social unrest and housing crisis during, 13–14 Greater Los Angeles CIO Council, 193 Green, Lucius, 126 Green, Sidney, 51, 121, 123, 125, 225n.13, 256n.9; on CHA, 52 Green, William, 15, 215n.5 Gregg, Ulysses, 124

276 GrifWth, Thomas L., 68 GrifWth, Van, 83, 210, 232n.19 GrifWth Park, 83 Gross, Edward, 253n.45 Gruen, Victor D., 132 Gruenberg, Robert, 262n.5 Guravich, Sarah, 254n.58 Gwinn Amendment, 126, 189–90 Hacienda Village, xi, 32, 35, 59; occupancy by race, 70 Haggerty, C. J., 37, 38, 78, 222n.56, 228n.41 Hahn, Kenneth, 108, 114, 120, 171–72, 172, 180, 239n.10, 244n.39, 256n.14, 257n.24, 258n.25 Hamby, Alonzo L., 6, 214n.8 Hamilton Methodist Church mass rally (1939), 39 Ham on Rye (Bukowski), 147 Hampton, Roy, 40–41 Handbook of Information and Suggestions for the Residents of Pueblo del Rio, 54 Harby, Harold, 29, 40–41, 145, 250n.17; reversal of public housing advocacy, 106, 107–8 Harding, Nathaniel, 97 Harlem riot (1935), 14 Harmer, Ruth M., 154, 252n.39, 265n.30 Harper’s Bazaar, 66 Harrison, Gilbert, 204 Hartley, Joseph A., 20 Harvey, David, 214n.14 Haskell, Oliver, 51, 68, 121, 139, 225n.14, 230n.55, 235n.40, 237n.53, 246n.52, 248n.3, 262n.4; on CHA, 52–53; limitation of political discourse and, 125–26; Parents’ Club at Pico Gardens and, 97–98 Hastings Law Journal, 140 Hatch Act, 128 Hatton, James, 152, 252n.34 Hausknecht, Murray, 143, 249n.12 Hawkins, Augustus, 37, 39, 78, 193 Hayden, Dolores, 215n.6 health care for project tenants, 55 Heard, Roby, 244n.44 Heitschmidt, Earl, 34 Helford, Norris, 87

Index Henderson, Cary, 257n.24 Hennessy, Lee, 176, 259n.35 Henry, Harold A., 106, 120, 127, 170, 246n.55 Herbert, Ray, 254n.55 Hess, H. Wm., 157, 253n.48 HHFA, 100, 146, 152–53 High Window, The (Chandler), 147–48 Himes, Chester, xiii Hines, Thomas, 256n.11–12 Hirsch, Arnold R., 189, 262n.5, 263n.10 Hise, Greg G., 215n.15 Hispanics: Mexican Americans, 56, 193; public housing support from, 39–40 Hoffman, Clare, 128, 246n.58 Hogya, John, 121, 244n.42 Holbrook, W.S., 119 Holden, Edward A., 210, 238n.1 Holland, John C., 106, 125, 145, 170, 181, 182, 239n.8, 241n.18, 241n.22, 242n.28, 252n.41–42, 254n.58, 256n.13, 257n.20, 259n.34, 261n.53; evictions from Chavez Ravine and, 176; opposition to Bunker Hill Redevelopment project, 154, 155, 161; opposition to Elysian Park Heights, 168; Proposition B and, 113, 115; Proposition 10 and, 104 HolliWeld, Chet, 78 Hollywood Citizen-News, 38, 212 Hollywood Freeway, 78 Hollywood Women’s Council, 59 Holtzendorff, Howard L., 31, 60, 221n.49, 222n.50, 228n.35, 230n.56, 245n.49, 246n.53, 247n.65, 260n.41, 262n.4; appointment to CHA, 29–30; Aréchigas’ eviction and, 177, 178; Chavez Ravine redevelopment and, 120, 166, 170; congressional hearings on CHA (1953) and, 128, 130; as CRA commissioner, 142; CUAC investigation of Communist inWltration of CHA and, 121, 123; federal funding and, 32; limiting political expression in projects, 125–26; on NHA and minority housing, 57; 1949 public housing contract and, 101; Pecan Street Project, 31; postwar housing crisis and, 77, 92; Poulson’s truce with, 131–32; revision of public housing program, 115;

Index veterans’ housing and, 83; Wilkinson and, 52, 119 Home Builders Institute, 110, 151, 154 Home Owners and Taxpayer Association, 108 “Hoovervilles,” 18 Hope, Bob, 76–77 HOPE VI program, xv Horn, Herbert H., 253n.45 Horn, Mabel, 168 Horne, Gerald, 200, 265n.31, 265n.35 Horne, Lena, 83, 88 hot-bedding, 56 house as sacred and private realm: metaphor of, ix–x House Naval Affairs Subcommittee hearings on Los Angeles, 60 housers-redevelopers perspective on postwar world, 63 House Special Subcommittee on Government Operations, hearings of, 128–30; Wilkinson Wle read at, 203–8 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 96, 119, 205–7 Housewives League, 39 Housing Act: of 1934, x; of 1937, x, 5, 13, 15, 17–18, 19, 27, 43, 47, 117; of 1937, projects constructed under, 34–36; of 1949, xvi, 6, 11, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 89, 92, 95, 98–100, 102, 115, 187, 188; of 1949, projects constructed under, 132–34; of 1949, Title I of, 143; of 1954, 146, 152, 156, 191; of 1965, 213n.2 Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA), 100, 146, 152–53 “Housing and Racial Discrimination” conference (1945), 60 Housing Authority v. Lopez, 174 housing conditions in Los Angeles during Depression, 18–19 housing contract (1949). See public housing contract (1949) housing crisis, xiv; during Great Depression, 13–14; postwar, 75, 76–102. See also World War II, public housing during Housing Progress in Western Europe (Wood), 16 Houston, Norman O., 57, 142, 249n.9

277 Howard, Mrs. A. J., 253n.45 HUAC, 96, 119, 205–7 Hudson River Houses, PWA’s, 14 Hughes, Sid, 244n.44 Hunt, D. Bradford, 18, 216n.10, 262n.5 Hunt, Vernon W., 126 Hunter, Paul Robinson, 132 Hunter Street project, 26–27, 28 If He Hollers, Let Him Go (Himes), xiii Illinois Supreme Court, 190 Imperial Courts, 49, 132; occupancy by race, 70 Imperial Courts Annexes, 49, 69, 70 Independent Committee of Volunteer Precinct Workers, 108 Independent OfWces Appropriations Act (1952), 106, 108–9, 117 Independent Progressive Party (IPP), 92, 205 Ingram, Charlotte, 65, 229n.46 integrated public housing: combating racism, 60–62; federal guidelines, 67–68; nonwhites in, 68–69; opposition to, 57–59; plans for, 57–58 Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, 105 interest group liberalism, 20 Inter-Project Residents Council, 79, 80, 92 Interracial Council of the Church Federation, 60 interventionist state, 2 interviews, taped, 209 In the City Was a Garden (Kraus), 53 Iron Curtain, xiii. See also Cold War; Red Scare Jackson, Alvin, 88 Jacobs, Eugene B., 248n.5 Japanese American Resettlement Committee, 79 Japanese Americans: relocation in concentration camps, 56; returning, 76, 77 Jeezer, Marty, 231n.3 Jefferson, Edwin L., 57 Jefferson High PTA, 39 Johnson, Bob, 244n.39–40 Johnson, Marilynn S., 190, 262n.6

278 Johnson, Reginald D., 34, 37, 144, 249n.14, 255n.6; redevelopment plans for Chavez Ravine, 165–66 Johnson, Roger C., 5, 32, 38, 51, 62, 65, 66–67, 78, 220n.44, 223n.61–62, 225n.8–9, 226n.17, 228n.40–41, 229n.46, 229n.50; Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing and, 27– 28, 29; project management by, 53–54 Johnson, Ruth, 121 Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, xiii, 235n.41. See also California Un-American Activities Committee Joint Senate-Assembly Committee on Community Redevelopment and Housing Problems, 145 Jones, Fowler, 258n.26 Jones, Hawley, 229n.47 Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Locke C., 83 Jones, Samuel, 125–26 Jordan Downs, 49, 57, 69, 132; occupancy by race, 70 juvenile delinquency, 112 Kaiser Healthcare Foundation, xiii–xiv Kalman, Ted, 236n.46 Kaufman, G. B., 34 Kaufman, Liza, 266n.6 Keane, James Thomas, 229n.51 Keats, Mark, 225n.4 Kechler, Mrs. R. D., 176, 259n.33 Keith, Nathaniel S., 63, 215n.3, 228n.42, 232n.16, 236n.45, 237n.56, 237n.58, 263n.9 Kelley, H. Roy, 34 Kennedy, John, 183 Kenny, Robert, 60 Keppler, Rinehardt, 84 Keppler Grove, 82, 84 Keynes, John Maynard, 2 Keynesian coalition, 13, 109, 197–98; center of, 3, 5; demise of, 10; political participants of, 3–4 Kilpatrick, Vernon, 90 Kirschbaum, Louis, 173 Kission, Mrs. Tim, 176, 259n.33 Knights of Columbus, 96 Knowland, William, 115 Koseki family, 53, 225n.15

Index Kosloff, Charles, 92 Kovner, Fay, 121, 123 Kraus, Henry, 53, 61–62, 69, 87, 96, 225n.15, 226n.17, 228n.38, 230n.53, 230n.57, 233n.25, 237n.50 Krimm, Arthur, 54, 226n.18 Ku Klux Klan, 58 Kunitsugo, Kango, 210, 226n.25 Labor Herald, 58, 72, 193, 212 Labor Housing Conference (LHC), 14, 16 labor unions. See organized labor Lane, Robert Gerhart, 240n.12 Lanham Act (Community Facilities Act, 1940), 47, 77 La Opinión, 166, 174, 178, 212 LAPD. See Los Angeles Police Department Las Floritas, 54 Laskey, Marlene, 210, 221n.46 Laughlin, Helen Mathewson, 20, 39 Leader, Lawrence, 18, 216n.12 League of Women Shoppers, 33 League of Women Voters, 79, 80, 88 Lee, Francis Lightfoot, 251n.31 Left, the: antipathy toward Yorty, 185; decline of, 185–86; deterioration of wartime détente between the Right and, xii; fragmentation and nulliWcation of, xvi, 5–6, 11, 191–95; identiWcation with Communism, 5; of Keynesian coalition, 3; “Old Left” vs. “New Left” of 1960s, 199–200; public housing proponents of, 4; Red Scare as assault on leftist thought, 195–98; social democratic aesthetic of planned civic culture, 7; view of urban form of Los Angeles, 4–5 left-liberal popular front, 3–4, 10, 11; addressing racism through public housing, 55–56; CHA’s spirit of reform and, 51–53; division of Democratic Party between progrowth coalition and, 180–83; emphasis on community within projects, 54; political consolidation of, during wartime, 45, 69–72; postwar unraveling of, 5–6, 76; public housing and making a better world, 4, 5, 6, 43; as public housing proponent, 33; redevelopment process and,

Index 144; Roosevelt coalition and, 13; visions of postwar world, 63–66 Leonard, Albert, 108, 240n.11 Levine, Jack G., 248n.5 Lewis, Evan, 19, 23–24, 25, 28, 218n.30, 219n.32, 220n.41 Liberal Democratic Club, 39 liberalism/liberals: interest group, 20; political abandonment of Bowron, 100–101; vital center liberals, 5–6, 199–200. See also left-liberal popular front Liebhardt, Ken, 182, 261n.52 Lincoln Heights, 198 Linda Vista (San Diego), xi Lindlea, Artel, 258n.27 Lindsey, Virginia, 53, 65, 229n.46 Lish, Iona, 54, 226n.17 Little Tokyo, 198; displacees, 92; inXux of African Americans into, 56–57 Long, Edward Robert, 263n.14 Long, John T., 20 Lopez, Ignacio, 167 Los Angeles Apartment House Association, 157 Los Angeles Building Trades Council, 90 Los Angeles Central Labor Council, 33 Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, 139 Los Angeles Church Federation, 80 Los Angeles CIO, 60, 61 Los Angeles Citizen (AFL weekly), 19, 30, 33, 37, 212 Los Angeles City Housing Authority, xv, xvi Los Angeles Committee for Better Housing and Planning, 62 Los Angeles Committee for Veterans’ Housing, 87 Los Angeles Committee on Racial Equality, 142 Los Angeles County Superior Court, injunction against Dodger contract, 173 Los Angeles Daily News, 27, 42, 81, 94, 114, 120, 128, 212 Los Angeles Democrat, 184 Los Angeles Examiner, 28, 77, 82, 171, 212 Los Angeles Federation of Teachers, 125 Los Angeles Health Department, 55

279 Los Angeles Herald and Express, 120, 128, 149, 151, 179, 212 Los Angeles Mirror, 103, 122, 128, 131, 135, 151, 212 Los Angeles Newspaper Guild, CIO’s, 38 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 125–26; Anti-Subversive Detail of, 207; treatment of minorities, 125–26, 193 Los Angeles Realty Board, 28, 154, 157 Los Angeles Sentinel, 68, 94, 97, 102, 104, 212 Los Angeles Times, 25, 86, 110, 113, 115, 116, 131, 151, 154, 160, 164, 166, 178, 184, 194, 212; mayoral election of 1953 and, 127–28, 130, 195 Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia, 250n.22 loyalty oaths, 96, 97, 123, 126, 190, 195 Lumina Park, 49, 69; occupancy by race, 71 Lumina Park Annex, 49 Lunden, Samuel E., 35 MacKenzie, Dolly and Anna, 253n.45 Magnin, Edgar F., 38, 78, 228n.41 major league baseball franchise, 171–72; Dodger Stadium and, 163, 172, 173–80 Manchester project, 30 manuscript collections, 211–12 Marin City, xii Marine, Gene, 255n.60 Markert, Clement, 61, 228n.38 Markowitz, Norman D., 214n.7 Marks, Mara Alexandra, 248n.3, 265n.32 Marlow, Fred W., 252n.41 Marsh, Norman, 35 Marshall, Bertha, 77, 231n.6 Martin, Albert C., Jr., 9, 210, 214n.15 Martin, Alice, 174 Martin, Willsie, 38, 78, 228n.41 Mar Vista Gardens, 132 material feminists, 15 Mayer, Albert, 8, 10, 13–14, 214n.11, 215n.1, 215n.17 Mayo, Charles George, 261n.58–60 McAuliffe, Mary Sperling, 5, 214n.7 McCarrol, 242n.27

280 McCarthy, Joseph R., 99, 103 McCarthyism, 6, 9, 135, 189, 190; main impact of, 195. See also Red Scare McClung, Charles E., 156, 253n.45–46, 253n.50 McCoy, Esther, 18, 20, 216n.12, 217n.18 McDonnell, Timothy, 15, 17, 215n.4–5, 216n.8–9 McGinnis, Felix H., 118, 119, 169, 256n.18 McGrath, Alice GreenWeld, 165, 210, 255n.4 McInerny, Robert G., 253n.45 McIntyre, James Francis Cardinal, 194 McKanna, Edmund, 182, 261n.53 McKenna, William F. (in Wilkinson Wle), 203–8 McKenzie, Roderick D., 4, 214n.6 McMullen, Ralph A., 19–20, 33, 41 McWilliams, Carey, 38, 62, 78, 165, 195, 228n.41, 255n.4, 264n.21, 264n.23 medicine, socialized, 55 Mellon, Louis L., 253n.45 Mercury Avenue project, 26–27, 28 Merriam, Frank, 18, 37 Merrill, Wilma, 180, 260n.47 Methodist clergy, 194 Metropolitan Housing Council, 22; organization in October 1938, 37 Metzger, John T., 14, 215n.2, 263n.10 Mexican Americans, 56, 193 Mexican Chamber of Commerce, 120 Mexican Committee, CIO, 56 Meyer, Mosier, 169 MHC, 18–19, 21 Mid Century White House Conference on Children and Youth, 205 Middleton, Frances, 176, 259n.33 Miley, Arthur F., 57, 62, 80, 227n.27, 228n.39, 232n.12 Miller, Loren, 156 Miller, Robert, 257–58n.24 Milwaukee Housing Authority, 190 minorities: Bowron 1949 reelection campaign and, 101; changing racial composition of city, 55–60; combating racism, 60–62; division over public housing in 1950s, 193; LAPD treatment of, 125–26, 193; occupancy

Index percentages at end of war, 68–69, 70–71; as proponents of public housing, 38–40; threats of racial violence, 62–63 Mirror-News, 174, 177, 178. See also Los Angeles Mirror Mitchell, J. Paul, 263n.11 Mizrahi, David, 81 Mizrahi, Sophie, 81 modern cityscape, 137–62; Bunker Hill, transformation of, 147–62; modern Los Angeles deWned by corporate modernism, 187; public housing and urban renewal, 137–47; rise of movement politics and, 198–99 Modern Housing (Bauer), x, 16 modernism: party politics and, 180–83; pro-growth adherents of, 180–81, 182; Southern California, xi; urban land use, 9. See also community modernism; corporate modernism Molina, Natalia, 223n.65 Mollenkopf, John H., 10, 199, 214n.9, 215n.18, 265n.32 Monaco, Armand, 35, 132 Mont, Max, 156 Montecito Hills Improvement Association, 105, 106 Montecito Property Owners for Public Housing, 105 Moody, C. R., 178, 259n.40 Morandini, D. M., 108 Morgen, Carl, 264n.14 Morley, Karen, 204 Morris, Gilbert E., 250n.21 Mortgage Bankers Association, 98 Moses, Robert, 172 Mothers’ Club, 42 Motion Picture Democratic Committee, 33 movement politics, 187; deWned, 10; development of, 163, 180; modern cityscape and rise of, 198–99 municipal ballot on appropriations to CHA (May 1939), 33–37 municipal elections: of 1945, 72; of 1953, 126–30, 191, 193, 194–95; of 1961, 183–85 Municipal Housing Commission (MHC), 18–19, 21 Municipal League, 33

Index Murchison street gang, 42 Murphy, Kim, 266n.5 Murray, Philip, 193 Naiditch, Jack, 121, 124, 125 Nash, Gerald, xii National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 60, 68, 79, 90, 142; Youth Council, 59 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), 65, 89, 98 National Association of Housing OfWcials (NAHO), 21, 63 National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB), 16, 95, 98, 146 National Association of Retail Lumber Dealers, 98 National Capital Housing Authority, 190 National CIO Committee to Abolish Discrimination, 61 National Citizens Political Action Committee, 80 National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL), 207, 208 National Committee to Abolish HUAC, 207 National Conference of Mayors, 89 National Defense Advisory Commission, 47 National Housing Agency (NHA), 47, 57, 58, 66 national housing policy, 100 National Housing Policy Conference (St. Louis, 1951), 150–51 National Industrial Recovery Act, 14 National Lawyers Guild, 80 National Maritime Union, 96 National Negro Congress, 28, 39, 90 National Public Housing Conference (NPHC), 14, 16 national public housing program, 187–91; referenda in opposition to, 187–91 Naval Affairs Subcommittee investigation of congested areas (1943), 61, 67 Navarro, Charles, 106, 119, 243n.37 Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939, 33 Negri, Antonio, 198, 213n.3, 265n.28 Neill, Frank, 108, 239n.10

281 Nelson, George, 176, 259n.34 Nelson, Herbert U., 95, 98, 236n.45, 237n.54 Nelson, Raymond, 51, 225n.9 Nelson, Mrs. Willie, 97 Neuman, Paul Michael, 223n.60 Neutra, Richard J., xi, xii, xiii, 8, 34, 35, 214n.12–13, 256n.11–12; Elysian Park Heights project design, 167–68; “Los Angeles in the Year 2000” articles, 9 Newark Housing Authority, 190 New Deal, 3, 195; Californian social democratic ideas anticipatory of, xi; revolutionary nature of, ix; social justice envisioned in, 46 New Deal Democrats: as public housing proponents, 33 New Jersey Supreme Court, 190 “New Left” of 1960s, 199 New Look for the City, A (Bryant, Alexander, Eckbo, and Johnson), 144 New Republic, 75, 188 newspaper sources, 212 New York City Housing Authority, 190 NHA, 47, 57, 58, 66 Nickerson Gardens, 132 Nisei Progressives, 92 Nisei War Vets, 88 Nixon, Richard M., 106, 115, 116, 239n.7, 242n.28 Non-Partisan League, 31 “No on B” campaign, 110, 114, 169 “No on 14” campaign, 91 Normark, Don, 255n.4 Normont Terrace, 48, 51, 61, 92; occupancy by race, 70 Norton, Philip, 67 Novak, Ed, 178, 259n.40 Now (civil rights newspaper), 68 Nunis, Doyce B., Jr., 210 nurseries, 53–54, 65–66 Observer, Frank, 251n.31 occupancy substandard classiWcation, 219n.36 Ochs, Phil, 265n.33 O’Connor, Frances Lee, 194, 264n.18 O’Dwyer, Thomas J., 30, 37, 40–41, 78, 80, 90, 228n.41, 232n.19, 234n.33,

282 245n.49, 256n.14; on Chavez Ravine, 168–69; on CUAC attack of Wilkinson, 124; Tenney’s attack on, 94; veterans’ housing and, 83; Wilkinson and, 38, 194 OfWce of Price Administration, 67 Olson, Culbert, xi, 40–41 O’Malley, Walter, 172, 178, 180 O’Neill, Francis J., 118, 119, 243n.36 oral history transcripts, 210–11 Ordinance 84,537, 137 Ordinance 100,676, 156 Ordinance 100,677, 156 Ordinance 101,900, 135 Ordinance 105,801, 171 Ordinance 113,231, 160 organized labor: decline in public housing support in 1950s, 192–93; postwar plans of, 63–66; pro-growth dictates and modernism embraced by, 181–82; public housing support from, 15, 16, 33–37; public housing war in City Council, 108 ostracism of potential nonconformists, 195 pachucos, 62 PaciWc Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play, 60 PaciWc Park, 48 PaciWc Park Annex, 82, 84 PaciWc Park Trailers: occupancy by race, 70 Pacoima project (San Fernando Gardens), 131, 132, 135, 198 Palmer, Charles F., 66 Park, Robert E., 4, 213n.6 Park Annex 2, 48 Parker, Robert H., 37 Parker, William H., 112, 114, 120, 128; Wilkinson Wle read by, 203–8 Parker Center in Little Tokyo: proposed construction of police department’s, 92 Parr, Charles L., 67, 229n.51 Parson, Don, 214n.14, 223n.59, 223n.61, 225n.12–14, 226n.20, 230n.55, 235n.36, 236n.48, 239n.8, 243n.34, 244n.39, 255n.4, 256n.10, 257n.24, 260n.51, 263n.13, 264n.27, 265n.36

Index party politics: modernism and, 180–83; movement politics vs., 10, 199 Patrosso, Julius V., 105 Patterson, Roy, 92 Patterson, William L., 125 Pearce, Wesley, 87 Pearl Harbor, 32 Pecan Street Project, 31 People’s World (Communist Party daily), 20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 33, 39, 42, 55, 58, 65, 78, 80, 96, 101, 104, 119, 131, 150, 185, 194, 212; changing racial composition of city and, 59–60; exposé of Councilman Lewis, 23–24 Perebloom, Andrew, 24 Permanente Medical Group, xiii–xiv permanent public housing projects, 47, 48 Perry, Pettis, 68 Peters, Anthony, 253n.45 Philadelphia Daily News, 189 Philadelphia Housing Authority, 189, 262n.4 Pico Gardens, 32, 34, 93; occupancy by race, 70; Parents’ Club at, 97–98 Pitchess, Peter, 174 Piven, Frances Fox, 215n.2 Poe, Elizabeth, 264n.20 Poe, Elvin, 260n.45 police brutality, 125–26, 193 political activism: Proposition 14, 90–91, 142; veterans’ direct action, 86–88 Political Affairs, 78 Polytechnic High School: debate on need for public housing at, 25 Ponce, Fred, 84 Ponty, Spiros, 91 popular mobilization: postwar housing crisis and, 78–80 Portsmouth Homes, 48, 69; occupancy by race, 71 Portsmouth Homes Annex, 48 Post, Langdon W., 8, 17, 25, 27, 28–29, 42, 43, 53, 54, 214n.13, 215n.6, 218n.31, 220n.39, 220n.43, 224n.70, 224n.73, 225n.14 postwar housing crisis, 75, 76–102; CPC report on city’s housing needs, 89–90; depth of, 76–78; 1949 Housing Act and, 76, 98–100, 102; 1949 public housing contract in Los Angeles and,

Index 100–101; popular mobilization and, 78–80; project life and, 95–98; Proposition 14 and, 90–91, 142; public vs. private housing issue, 89–90; Red-baiting of public housing, 93–95, 96, 195; site selection, 103–6; veterans and direct action on housing, 86–88; veterans’ housing, 80–86 postwar world: visions of, 45, 63–66 Poulson, Harper W., 88, 204, 234n.29 Poulson, Norris, 154, 185, 210, 246n.55, 247n.63, 248n.66, 254n.55, 255n.1, 258n.24–25, 259n.32–33, 260n.41, 261n.59; Bunker Hill redevelopment project and, 151–52, 158, 159, 160; cancellation of Elysian Park Heights, 170; cancellation of 1949 public housing contract, 131–35; Chavez Ravine project and, 173, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182–83; city park complex plan, 170, 171, 172; Dodger Stadium and, 173, 176, 177, 178; mayoral election of 1953 and, 127–30, 191, 194; modern Los Angeles and, 163–64; pro-growth advocacy, 182–83; truce with Holtzendorff, 131–32; Yorty’s 1961 campaign against, 183–85 Powell, Herbert, 35 Praeger, Arnold, 173 private housing industry: high postwar rate of construction, 192; postwar plans of, 65; private vs. public housing debate, 89–90. See also real estate lobby private sector-oriented corporatism, xiv. See also corporate modernism; pro-growth coalition Pro-America, 105 “progress”: watchword of, 180, 181 Progressive Citizens of America (PCA), 5, 90 Progressive Party, 5–6 pro-growth coalition, 6, 11, 180–81, 182, 198; Yorty election (1961) and, 183–85 project siting. See siting, project Property Owners’ Association, 25 proponents, public housing, 4, 15–16, 33–40, 86–88

283 Proposition B, 110–16, 188, 191; defeat of, 145; “No on B” vs. “Yes on B” campaigns, 110, 114–15, 169 Proposition C, 151 Proposition 10, 104 Proposition 14, 90–91, 142 Proposition 18, 145, 151 Prussell, George O., 252n.41 Public Health and Welfare Committee, 22, 26–27, 27 public housing: antagonism of real estate interests to, 66–67; appropriations to large cities as subordinate component of urban renewal, 191; burgeoning of, during 1960s, 191; chronology of events in Los Angeles, 201–2; city ofWcials’ ambivalence about embracing, 24–25; civic beneWts of, 41–42; construction in U.S., 192; construction under 1937 Housing Act, 34–36; construction under 1949 Housing Act, 132–34; downsizing of, xv; equation of socialism/communism with, 17, 94–95, 103, 106, 108, 114, 117–25, 188–91, 194–95; Europeanstyle social democratic practice of, x, xi; everyday life in, 40–43, 53–55, 95–98, 125–26; federal, x, xvi, 13–18; Wnal program, 31–32; lack of success in U.S., ix–x; location of projects, 36, 50, 85, 133; in Los Angeles, 18–21; “making of a better world” as intent of, 1, 4, 5, 6, 43, 200; national program, referenda in opposition to, 187–91; opponents, 16–17; popular demand for, 14; problems of police in projects, xv; proponents, 4, 15–16, 33–40, 86–88; role in postwar world, CHA outline of, 47–51; stigmatized as housing for the poor, xiv; tenants, Gwinn Amendment and erosion of power of, 189–90; wartime total living in, 66; during World War II, 45–73 Public Housing Administration (PHA), 100 public housing contract (1949), 100–101; cancellation of, 130–35; Davenport resolution to rescind, 109–10; Proposition B to “reinstate,” 110–16, 145, 169, 188, 191

284 public housing war of early 1950s, 2, 6, 103–35; cancellation of public housing contract, 130–35; City Council revolt, 106–10; CUAC investigation of Communist inWltration of CHA, 117, 121–25; mayoral election of 1953 and, 126–30; Proposition B and, 110–16, 145, 169, 188, 191. See also Red Scare Public Order 671, 33 public war housing projects. See World War II, public housing during Public Works Administration (PWA), Housing Division of, 14–15, 18–19 Pueblo del Rio, 32, 34, 54–55, 208; occupancy by race, 70 Pueblo del Rio Annex, 49, 70 Pueblo del Rio Extension, 132 Pueblo Village, xi Pugsley, William, 250n.22 Puritans: home theologized by, ix Quinn, Katherine de Wille, 57–58, 227n.28 Quonset huts: veterans housed in, 83–84 quota system: abandonment of, 68 race: changing racial composition of city, 55–60; combating racism, 60–62; federal guidelines regarding distribution of public housing by, 67–68; public housing occupancy by, 68–69, 70–71; racial tensions in projects, xii–xiii, 97; threats of racial violence, 62–63 race-restricting covenants, 58, 59, 142 race riots, 62, 199, 200 racism, 55–60; combating, 60–62; ofWcially sanctioned, 58 Radford, Gail, 215n.3 Ralphs, Mrs. Albert, Jr., 57, 227n.28 Ramirez, Sally, 174 Ramona Community Club, 54 Ramona Village/Gardens, xi, xii, 34, 37, 40; cooperation agreement, 22, 23, 24; everyday life in, 40–43, 53–54; management during war, 51; occupancy by race, 70; siting of, 21, 22, 23 Rancho San Pedro, 32, 34; occupancy by race, 70

Index Rancho San Pedro Extension, 132 Raner, Guy Havard, Jr., 91, 235n.37, 238n.1, 240n.12–13 Rasmussen, Carl, 24, 25, 26–27, 28, 40–41, 53, 96, 218n.30, 219n.33, 220n.42, 236n.49 Rayburn, Sam, 99–100 Raymond, Eleanor, 124, 245n.49 Rea, Philip M., 100, 142 real estate industry: antagonism to public housing, 66–67 real estate lobby, 102; 1949 Housing Act and, 98–100; “No on 14” campaign, 91; opposition from, 17; wartime consolidation and legislative power of, 75. See also private housing industry real estate market, xiii Realty Board, 105 Rebuilding a City (Alexander and Bryant), 144 Red-baiting of public housing, 93–95, 96, 195 redevelopment: deWned, 139. See also urban redevelopment Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes, 158 Red Scare, xvi, 6, 11, 103–35; assault against local public housing programs, 188–91; assault against welfare state and leftist thought, 195–98; beneWciaries of assault on public housing, 196–97; cancellation of public housing contract and, 130–35; Chavez Ravine lawsuit, 118–21; City Council and the courts, 116–17; City Council’s revolt, 106–10; CUAC investigation of Communist inWltration of CHA, 117, 121–25; curtailment of political discourse via, 125–26; fragmentation and nulliWcation of the Left and, 191, 193; impact of, 197; loyalty oaths, 96, 97, 123, 126, 190, 195; mayoral election of 1953, 126–30; national political culture warped by, 199–200; projects constructed under 1949 Housing Act, 133–34; Proposition B and, 110–16, 145, 169, 188, 191; site selection and, 103–6; termination of project construction and, 2 Redwine, Gwyn, 253n.45

Index Reed, G. W., 239n.5 Reed, William R., 176, 259n.34 referendum defeats of public housing, 187–91 reform: CHA’s spirit of, 51–53 regionalist perspective on postwar world, 63 Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), 8, 16 rehabilitation and conservation, 146; Bunker Hill proposal, 154–55 Reinhold, Robert, 266n.6 religion, organized: inXuence within the Left, 193–94; as proponent of public housing, 37, 38 relocation housing for Bunker Hill residents, 159, 161 rent control, 67; decontrol, 86 rent riots, 13–14 residential superblock, 8 Residents Committee Against Loyalty Oaths in Housing, 126 residents’ councils, 52, 53–55, 90 restrictive covenants, 58, 59, 142 Richards Development Corporation, 169 Right, the, 5; deterioration of wartime détente between the Left and, xii; of Keynesian coalition, 3; pro-growth coalition and, 6 riots, 265n.32; race, 62, 199, 200; rent, 13–14; zoot-suit, xii, 62–63 Risley, Winston L., 35 Rittmaster, Maude, 57, 227n.28 Robbin, Ed, 227n.32 Roberts, Priscilla, 229n.47 Roden, John, 87 Rodger Young News, 96 Rodger Young Village, 82, 83–84, 92; Burke incident, 96–97; as microcosm of Los Angeles, 95–96; racial composition in 1946, 236n.47 Rogers, Joan, 105 Roll, Ernest, 121 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 26, 45, 67, 76, 230n.2; New Deal, ix, xi, 3, 46, 195 Roosevelt coalition, 3–4, 13, 69, 99, 180, 197; postwar unraveling of, 5 Rose Hill Courts, 32, 35; occupancy by race, 70 Rose Hill Courts Extension, 116, 131, 135

285 Rosenblatt, Fay, 241n.18 Rosien, Barbara, 20 Ross, Irwin, 214n.8 Ross, William B., 91, 173, 210, 234n.36, 246n.56 Rothstein, Mignon E., 69, 229n.53, 230n.56 Roybal, Edward R., 114, 120, 170, 180, 244n.39, 252n.34, 252n.38, 252n.41, 253n.46, 254n.58, 257n.20, 258n.26–27, 259n.35, 259n.40, 264n.24; on Dodger contract, 172; evictions from Chavez Ravine and, 176, 178; opposition to Bunker Hill Redevelopment project, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 161; opposition to Communist Registration Ordinance, 196; opposition to stadium in Chavez Ravine, 181 RPAA, 8, 16 Rubber Workers International, 28 Ruben, Julius, 173, 179 Ruck, W. F., 35, 132 Rudd, Hynda, 210–11, 261n.57 Rudder, John, 190 Rundberg, Karl, 178 Salazar, Rodolfo, 32 San Fernando Gardens (Pacoima project), 131, 132, 135, 198 Sansbury, Gail, 250n.22, 252n.38 San Vicente Village, 26, 30–31, 32 Save Chavez Ravine for the People Committee, 173, 176 Scharf, Ronald, 88 Schiesl, Martin J., 224n.1 Schindler, Pauline, 124 Schindler, Rudolph, xi Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 5, 214n.7 Schott, Arthur, 153 Schrecker, Ellen, 195, 264n.22, 265n.33 Schuler, R. P. (Bob), 194, 264n.17 Schwartz, Joel, 263n.10 Scobie, Ingrid Winther, 231n.5, 231n.7, 235n.41 Scott, Mellier G., Jr., 37, 38, 218n.25, 223n.59, 249n.14, 250n.20 Section 220 program, 146 segregation, residential, 55. See also integrated public housing; race Seligman, Daniel, 265n.34

286 Seligman, Louis, 218n.27 Senate Banking Committee, 99 Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, 235n.41 Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Development, 98 Sesnon, William T., Jr., 142, 149, 153, 154, 252n.39, 254n.55; Bunker Hill redevelopment and, 157, 158, 160 Shannon, William V., 86, 233n.24 Shattuck, Charles R., 146 Shaw, Frank, 18–20, 21, 33, 37, 38, 183, 217n.15–16 Shore, Dinah, 83 Siegal, Shirley Adelson, 80 Silver, Phill, 158–60, 179, 253n.50–52, 254n.54 Simmons, Jerold, 266n.2 Sinclair, Upton, xi siting, project, 21–30, 104, 105; battles over, 30–31; postwar, 103–6 Sitton, Thomas Joseph, 20, 144, 193, 217n.18, 249n.14, 264n.16 Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, 62 slum clearance, 23–24, 28, 38, 145, 191; accomplished by CHA, 139; equivalent elimination policy and, 137; Housing Act of 1949 and, 143; redevelopment and, 146 slums, 95; “blighted areas” vs., 140; CHA/CHC guided tours of, 92–93; as object of public housing program, 140 Small Property Owners League, 111, 112, 121, 145, 197; Highland Park branch of, 115 Smith, David D., 35 Smith, Elizabeth, 121, 125 Smith, Frederick C., 87, 95, 236n.45 Smither, C. C., 25 Snyder, Clara, 130, 247n.60 social democracy: European-style, x, xi; lack of success in U.S., ix–x, 187; postwar assault against reforms, 195–98; World War II and, xii socialism: association of public housing with, 17, 94–95, 103, 106, 108, 114, 117–25, 188–91, 194–95 socialized medicine, 55 Social Security: Californian social democratic ideas anticipatory of, xi

Index Sojourner Truth Public Housing project (Detroit), 62 Somerville, J. Alexander, 55, 226n.22 Soriano, Raphael, xi sources, 209–12 Southern California Building and Loan Association, 108 South Side Young Democrats, 24 Southwest Builder and Contractor, 40 Spanish-speakers: public housing support from, 39–40 Spartan Aircraft Co., 81 Spaulding, Charles B., 77, 231n.5 Spaulding, Sumner, 34 Spaulding-Rex and DeSwarte, 132 Stahl, Charles M., 176, 259n.35 State Housing Agency, 91, 149 State Legislative Conference, 88 State Redevelopment Agency, 149 Stein, Mrs. Arthur, 181, 260n.50 Stein, Clarence, 8, 168 Stewart, Potter, 206 Stimson, Marshall, 164 Story, Harold H., 19, 210, 217n.13 Straus, Nathan, 20, 24, 27, 220n.38 subsidies, federal, 110 substandard dwelling classiWcation, 219n.36 suburban development, 6, 9, 192 subversive guilt, determination of, 195. See also Red Scare Sugrue, Thomas J., 188, 262n.3 Sullivan, Neil, 260n.44 Summers, Anthony, 266n.5 Sunshine, Hy L., 121, 123 superblock, residential, 8 Swain, Frank G., 111 Taft, Robert, 95 Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill (Housing Act of 1949), xvi, 6, 11, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 89, 92, 95, 98–100, 102, 115, 187, 188; projects constructed under, 132–34; Title I of, 143 Takei, Art, 92 taped interviews, 209 tax increment Wnancing: institution of, 145, 146, 151 Taylor, Helen, 236n.46, 255n.8 Taylor, John Egan, 116 Temple-Beaudry, 198

Index temporary public housing projects, 47, 48–49, 66 tenant democracy, 53–55 Tenney, John (Jack) B., xiii, 94, 96 Tenney Committee, 94, 208 Terry, Jessie, 39, 121, 223n.64 Theoharis, Athan, 214n.8 Thomas, R. J., 63 Thrapp, E. R., 108, 240n.11 Thrasher, Ed, 40–41 Timberlake, Leonard E., 96, 109, 180, 236n.49, 240n.13 Tipton, Mary, 157–58, 253n.51 TjofXat, Gerald B., 208 Tobey, Charles, 99, 237n.56 Torrez, Armado G., 244n.40 Townsend, Dorothy, 266n.4 Townsend, Francis, xi Troeger, Roy C. and Dorothy, 253n.45 Truman, Harry S., 6, 79, 82, 86, 115–16, 237n.58; Fair Deal, 6, 99, 102; 1949 Housing Act and, 99–100 Turpin, Dick, 233n.21 Twenty-fourth Well-Baby Conference in Los Angeles, 42 un-Americanism: housing activism connected with, 94. See also California Un-American Activities Committee; Red Scare Underwood, Katherine, 254n.58 Unemployed Councils, 13–14 unemployment: Great Depression and, 13, 14 United Negro and Allied Veterans of America, 88, 204 United Negro Congress, Los Angeles chapter, 39 United Patriotic People of U.S.A., 117 United Progressive News, 31 United Public Workers, 125 U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 16, 98 U.S. government: Bowron on fundamental purpose of, 144 U.S. Housing Acts. See Housing Act U.S. Housing Authority (USHA), 15, 27, 47; establishment of, 17; funding, 21–30; vision of projects, 43 U.S. Saving and Loan League, 17, 98

287 U.S. Supreme Court: contempt conviction of Wilkinson upheld by, 206–7, 208; council’s appeal for writ of certiorari from, 117; dismissal of Ruben’s appeal, 179; on Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Gwinn Amendment decision, 190 United States v. Certain Lands in City of Louisville, 14 University of Southern California’s People’s Education Center, 189 Unrau, Harlan Dale, 227n.32 urban ecology, 4 urbanism: visions of postwar, 63–66 Urban League, 68, 79, 80 urban redevelopment (urban renewal), 2, 6, 11, 100, 102; blighted areas as object of, 140; Bunker Hill, transformation of, 147–62; change to “urban renewal,” 137, 146; funding for, 145–46; minority ghettos or barrios targeted for, 198–99; Red Scare and ascent of, 198–99; “slash and burn,” 146; tension between public housing and, 137–47 Utah Street project, 25, 26 Valencia, Mr. and Mrs. Sam, 40–41 Valencia Gardens (San Francisco), xi Varela, Leo D., 51 Vargas, Aurora, 174 Velis, José Ruíz, 226n.25 Venice, integrated public war housing planned for, 57–58; opposition to, 57–59 Venice Citizens Committee, 57 Venice Round Table, 57 Verge, Arthur C., 224n.3 Veterans’ Emergency Housing Program (VEHP), 82, 86 Veterans Home Buyers Association (Committee of One Thousand Home Buyers), 67, 87, 89, 204 veterans’ housing, 80–86; postwar housing crisis and, 76, 77; veterans and direct action on housing, 86–88 Veterans’ Housing Caravan (March 23–24, 1947), 88, 94 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 79, 88 Viehe, Fred W., 217n.18

288 Vietnam war, 200 violence, threats of racial, 62–63 visions of postwar world, 45, 63–66 vital center liberals, 5–6, 199–200 Wadsworth Avenue project (Watts project), 29, 58–59, 198 Wagner, Len, 247n.59 Wagner, Robert, 14, 15, 215n.5 Wagner Act: equivalent elimination clause, 22 Wagner-Ellender/Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill. See Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill (Housing Act of 1949) Wagner-Steagall Act (Housing Act of 1937), x, 5, 13, 15, 17–18, 19, 27, 43, 47, 117; projects constructed under, 34–36 Walker, A. R., 35 Wallace, Henry A., 5, 95, 193 Walters, Glen, 174 War Manpower Commission, 60 War Relocation Authority, 77 Warren, Earl, 78, 79, 88 Warren, Frank A., 213n.5 war workers. See defense workers; World War II, public housing during Watson, Kendrick, 40 Watson, Loyall F., 35 Watts project, 29, 58–59, 198. See also Jordan Downs Watts riot (1965), 199, 200 Weaver, George, 61, 228n.37 Weaver, Robert C., 68–69, 143, 230n.56, 249n.13 Weber, Henry, 111, 121, 244n.42 Weber, Michael P., 263n.10 Weckler, Joseph, 51, 225n.8–9 Weingart, Ben, 264n.26 Weiss, Marc A., 248n.1, 249n.13 Welch, Ramón, 39–40, 223n.65 Welfare Council of Los Angeles, 80 welfare state, 2–4, 33, 102; elements of, 2; 1937 Housing Act as signiWcant expansion of, 18; postwar assault against, 195–98; postwar role of, 65; social foundation of planned economy of, 3; visions of postwar world, 63–66 Well-Baby Plan, 55

Index Western Terrace, 49; occupancy by race, 71 West Los Angeles project (San Vicente Village), 26, 30–31 Weston, Eugene, Jr., 34, 37, 40, 224n.67 White, Art, 242n.29, 243n.32, 244n.39–40, 244n.42, 246n.53, 246n.58, 247n.59–60 White, Magner, 244n.39 Wice, G. Spencer, 194, 264n.17 Wiener, Rosalind, 172 Wilkins, Hugh, 31 Wilkinson, Frank, xvi, 51, 80, 90, 126, 145, 221n.48, 223n.59–60, 225n.10–11, 229n.52, 230n.55, 235n.40, 243n.35, 244n.43–44, 245n.47, 245n.49–50, 250n.17, 256n.10, 256n.18, 264n.23, 265n.35; accusations of Communism against, 6, 118, 119, 121; advocacy of popular agitation, 89; on CHA, 52; Chavez Ravine and, 118–19, 121, 168, 169–70; congressional hearings on CHA and, 128, 130; criticism of real estate interests, 67; CUAC investigation of CHA and, 121–23, 125; Elysian Park Heights and, 167; Wle on, 203–8; joining CHC, 37–38; O’Dwyer and, 38, 194; postwar housing crisis and, 92, 93; on public housing, 1, 68; on Red Scare, 195, 196; as secretary or CHC, 52; site selection and, 104; struggle to abolish HUAC, 205–7; on Watts riot (1965), 200 Wilkinson, Jean Benson, 122–25, 205, 245n.50 Wilkinson v. FBI, 207 Wilkinson v. Governor Moore, 207 Wilkinson v. President Faucet, 207 Wilkinson v. United States, 208 William Mead Homes, 32, 35, 68; occupancy by race, 70 Williams, Carlton E., 100, 163, 243n.36, 244n.39, 245n.47–48, 245n.50, 252n.37, 258n.26, 261n.57 Williams, Frances, 204 Williams, Paul R., 34, 35, 37, 132 Williamson, Adina, 121, 123, 125 Williamson, A. E., 219n.36 Williamson, Frances, 205

Index Willis, Henry M., 83 Wilmall Cottages, 71 Wilmall Dormitories, 71 Wilmington Apartments, 71 Wilmington Hall, 49, 51, 82–83, 84 Wilmington Hall Cottages, 48 Wilson, Adrian, 34, 35 Wilson, Eugene Lewis, 37 Wilson, James, 26, 219n.34 Wilson, Lewis E., 34 Winslow, Carleton W., 35 Winter, Carl, 69, 230n.59 Wisconsin Supreme Court, 190 Wise, Harold, 235n.36 Withers, Bertha, 104, 169, 256n.16 Witmer, David J., 35 Wolcott, Jesse, 99 Wolf, Van, 23, 218n.24 Wolf, Willita H., 23, 218n.24 Wolfe, Alan, 100, 143, 249n.12, 260n.46 Wolt, Irene, 100, 184, 185, 238n.60, 247n.62, 252n.38, 257n.24, 261n.58 women: nurseries and day care in projects, 53–54, 65–66; postwar employment of, 65–66; postwar housing crisis and, 77–78; vision of public housing, 15–16; wartime employment of, 54 Wood, Edith Elmer, 16, 216n.7 Wood, Elizabeth, 189 Wood, John S., 96 Workers Alliance, 33 Work Projects Administration (WPA) housing surveys: of 1938, 18; of 1940, 23, 26 World War I, 47

289 World War II, public housing during, xi–xii, 45–73; CHA and, 47–53, 66–69; changing racial composition of city, 55–60; combating racism, 60–62; effects of war on public housing movement, 73; everyday life, organization of, 53–55; location of, 50; occupancy by race, 68–69, 70–71; permanent projects, 47, 48; political consolidation of left-liberal popular front, 45, 69–72; racial violence, threats of, 62–63; temporary projects, 47, 48–49, 66; visions of postwar world and, 45, 63–66 Wright, Gwendolyn, ix Wright, Henry, 8 Wright, Lloyd, 34 writ of certiorari,:U.S. Supreme Court denial of, 117 Wurdeman, Walter, 35 Wurdeman & Beckett, 34 Wurster, William, xi Wyatt, Wilson W., 82, 86 Wyman, Rosalind Wiener, 177, 182, 210, 257n.24 “Yes on Prop. B” campaign, 114 YMCA, 79 Yorty, Samuel, 19, 20, 183–85, 186, 210, 261n.57 Young, Jack, 233n.20, 234n.34, 236n.43, 251n.29 Young, Mrs. Nicholas, 83 Young, Rodger, 83 YWCA, 79 Zimmerman, A. C., 34 zoot-suit riots, xii, 62–63

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Don Parson is an independent scholar based in Thousand Oaks, California. He earned a doctorate in urban planning from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his research interests include housing, urban politics, and planning history.

Kevin Starr is University Professor of History at the University of Southern California and State Librarian Emeritus of the State of California. He is the author of Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003 and of the six-volume series Americans and the California Dream, among other works.