Surf, Sand and Self-Determination: Jim Crow-Era Leisure for Black Angelenos
Trudi Sandmeier 0:00
Today on Save As:
Alison Rose Jefferson 0:01
The African American folks who were here in Los Angeles and Santa Monica figured out that they can hang out at this beach down the street from where the historic African American community in Santa Monica had formed.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:23
Welcome to Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the lens of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 0:34
And I’m Cindy Olnick. So, Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:37
Yes, Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 0:38
I’d like to welcome our listeners to season three of Save As. Yes. You just heard from Alison Rose Jefferson, who’s our guest today, and we’ll talk with her in a moment. But first, Trudi, I believe we have some news to share with our listeners.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:55
Indeed, it was a busy summer. We had some exciting news come across our desks. We were the lucky recipients of not only one, not only two, but three amazing awards. First, we got an award from the American Association for State and Local History. And then we got an award from the statewide California organization, the California Preservation Foundation. And then we got an amazing award from the Los Angeles Conservancy right here in LA. celebrating the work of the podcast, which is totally fantastic. Yes. So, we are really thrilled and so pleased that folks are listening, that folks are appreciating what we’re doing and that our students voices are really getting out there and being heard.
Cindy Olnick 1:47
And you know what, we’re super, super grateful for all the guests because without these stories, there would be no podcast. So, thanks to all of our guests over the last couple of years, all of our future guests and all of our behind the scenes geniuses producer Willa, Willa Seidenberg best producer ever and all of our stealth volunteers. Thank you.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:09
So Cindy, you talked with one of our early grads, tell me a little bit about your conversation.
Cindy Olnick 2:15
Yes, yes. I actually did my first in person on site, Save As interview and it was super exciting. Went out to the beach in Santa Monica and did a Where Are They Now interview with Alison Rose Jefferson, PhD, who graduated from the Heritage Conservation Program in 2007. She did her thesis on a topic near and dear to her heart, African American leisure sites; in her case Lake Elsinore, and then she has built on that work over the years, and now has a great book, and we had a great conversation.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:50
I’m looking forward to listening. So how did we get to it right now.
Cindy Olnick 2:57
All right, so we are here on a lovely, cloudless Southern California morning, Alison, please say hello to our listeners and introduce yourself.
Alison Rose Jefferson 3:06
Hello to all the listeners out there. My name is Alison Rose Jefferson. And I am a historian and heritage conservation consultant. And I have a book out called Living the California Dream: African American Leisure sites during the Jim Crow Era, about African American places related to recreation and the outdoors and community development and business development that are relevant to this podcast and to our visit here today to Santa Monica.
Cindy Olnick 3:40
Absolutely. It’s a great book, I highly recommend it. So here we are. We’re at the foot of a beautiful little park called Crescent Bay Park, here in Santa Monica. There’s a lovely colonnade with a pergola atop it and probably around 75, 80 feet long. We’ll have a picture of it in the show notes, and it’s just a really mellow place. So, Alison, tell us a little bit about why we’re standing here today.
Alison Rose Jefferson 4:07
So, this area has been designated recently in 2019, as the Bay Street Beach Historic District. It’s the first National Register [of Historic Places] district in Santa Monica. And it’s also one of the few districts in California and the nation that relate to African American history. And this place was where African Americans wound up hanging out at the beach, in part because it was in front of the public park, the Crescent Bay Park, so they didn’t have to worry about private property owners harassing them to move from in front of their property. And this would have been from around the early 1900s until the civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s. Even though California had civil rights laws that were on the books in the 1890s, it said places like the beach were open to anybody, African Americans sometimes would have problems at various public accommodations, because white folks would informally be prejudiced against them and tell them they wouldn’t serve them. Or they would try to harass them and tell them that they couldn’t use a public beach or use a public park. And in some cases, these white folks were able to prevail. And in other cases, they were not. And so, to help to alleviate that problem, the African American folks who were here in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica figured out that they can hang out at this beach, down the street from where the historic African American community in Santa Monica had formed around Phillips Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which is at Fourth and Bay Street. And that church got their first building in 1908, and it’s still on that site, although in a remodeled, a 1940s building. And so, this place was really very instrumental in providing a space for African Americans to have their California dream at the beach.
Cindy Olnick 6:19
Yes, and one of those people was Verna Williams who did an oral history in 1992 for the Los Angeles Public Library’s Shades of LA project. Here she is talking about the beach.
Verna Williams 6:31
Yeah, we used to go to the beach a lot. And believe it or not, I never did learn how to swim but I used to love to go there and play in the water. And then get wet and then come and cover up in the sand. That really made you feel good to get real wet and then cover up in that sand. Santa Monica Beach that used to be the place to go you know, because it wasn’t so interesting going to the parks here because they had the parks segregated; you couldn’t go to the like Exposition Park and go to the swimming pool when you want it to you had to go a certain day. That was the day before they changed the water, like if they change the water on Friday, well, we could go on Thursday and use the pool because they were gonna change the water next day. I don’t want to go in that old dirty water. So we didn’t go to the parks very much, so we ended up going to the beach all the time, you know
Alison Rose Jefferson 7:41
Verna Deckard Louis Williams, she moved here in the 1920s. Her brother was already here, her parents and she had driven from Austin, Texas to come visit him. And she liked it so much. She was like, Oh I don’t want to go back. And so, she figured out how to stay. She eloped with Arthur Lewis.
Verna Williams 8:02
And they wouldn’t agree. Let me stay out here. And my parents were in. So, I just sort of kept hinting around to my husband-to-be that, Oh I’d just do anything to stay out here. I don’t want to go back to that old bad Texas. And he said, You’d do anything? I said, Yeah, I sure would. Well, what about marrying me? That’s the way he proposed. After we saw my parents off, they went on and they let me stay. They went on back home to. drove their car back to Texas. And so my husband and his same little friend with a car had come over. His name was Bird Briley. And so, we just got in the car and went to the beach, spent all day at the beach.
Alison Rose Jefferson 8:55
She has several pictures of herself here at the beach, some with her new husband Arthur. And they were at Pico in the famous shot that is in the LA Public Library collection with the Casa Del Mar sign behind it.
Verna Williams 9:10
That was August 2, 1924. We weren’t even married then we were married August the 18th of ’24. That was August the second and that’s the first time I ever hooked up with a boy on the, out in public. Oh, my dad saw that picture. He really balled me out. What are you doing hooked up with a boy out in public like that? He just thought that was terrible. I said pop I didn’t do that. He just grabbed me.
Alison Rose Jefferson 9:52
So Black folks were still using the beach there sometimes, but they really got pushed further south on the beach between Bay and Bicknell once the Casa Del Mar Club was built and then the other beach club the Waverley, which now is the Shutters on the Beach, and then a couple other beach clubs north. So it’s interesting to just think about that in terms of, you know, the spatial dynamics, but she also has pictures of herself at other places like Val Verde, which was Eureka Villa originally in northern LA County near Santa Clarita. And then also, there’s a picture of her in a beauty contest that was at the Parkridge Country Club, which was in Corona in Riverside County, which I I also talked about in my book. So yeah, so she was, you know, moving and grooving in terms of enjoying what California had to offer in the outdoors.
Cindy Olnick 10:48
So, this site, it has a rich history. And you know, honestly, if you didn’t know, and you just came here, you sort of wouldn’t know, right, but there is a monument to the area’s history a little further down. You want to walk down there. Okay, check it out.
Alison Rose Jefferson 11:06
Let’s walk down there.
Cindy Olnick 11:12
All right, so now we are closer to the ocean right on the beach, and we are at a lovely monument. So tell us about this.
Alison Rose Jefferson 11:20
It was actually the Black surfers who proposed the idea initially, to landmark this site. And they were really interested in highlighting Nick Gabaldon, the first documented surfer of African American and Mexican American descent who grew up in Santa Monica and died in a surfing accident at the Malibu Pier in 1952. And I did help to craft the final text for the monument that’s here.
Cindy Olnick 11:50
Which is very poignant, and the title is The Inkwell, a place of celebration and pain. So why The Inkwell?
Alison Rose Jefferson 12:00
So, the name The Inkwell is something that white folks called this place because Black people came here and it was a reference to the color of their skin and then mixing in the water. The term “inkwell” was something that was used all over the country for recreation places that African Americans were associated with water. And some Black folks and white folks have taken this name and repurposed it in terms of using it as a term of pride rather than the derogatory beginnings of it.
Cindy Olnick 12:35
Reclaimed it. But what do you think about that?
Alison Rose Jefferson 12:37
So I have mixed feelings about the use of the term “inkwell.” In my work, generally, I refer to the place as the Bay Street Beach, and then I make reference to what it was called by white folks so that people have that association to understand both identifications. Some people don’t really care these days, in terms of the contested history of the name, but I do. I always was uncomfortable with calling this place The Inkwell, although I have used that term in my own work, but as I became more educated in terms of understanding the dynamics of what the word meant, and also in terms of understanding when you’re marking place, certain words that you might use will erase some of the other experiences that go along with the place. And I don’t want to be involved in that. I want people to be aware of the full story. And I don’t want the victimization to be the leading thing that comes out all the time in terms of the narrative because there was agency involved in terms of African Americans, you know, using this place and moving to California and using other places where they made place and community and attempted or were successful at developing businesses.
Cindy Olnick 14:04
You know, your book is just as much a story of great success in entrepreneurship and innovation. And in fact, I’m looking, you know, away from the beach at Casa Del Mar, and these other you know, hotels and buildings and stuff, and there was a consortium of African Americans who wanted to build a club right here. Correct?
Alison Rose Jefferson 14:26
African Americans attempted to build a big resort here in the 1920s, early 1920s. They were able to establish a smaller resort a couple of blocks in near Pico and Main, which was called La Bonita. And that started in around 1914. But the place that they tried to build right on the beach was 1922, and that was led by Norman O. Houston, who was one of the founders of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was one of the largest African American businesses in the West, and Charles S. Darden. They were leading this effort to build this beach club and amusement facility that would have been right where Shutters on the Beach is at Pico and the oceanfront. And they were economically and racially sabotaged by white supremacists, who didn’t want Black folks to have this beautiful facility that they wanted to build. And they didn’t want Black folks to own any land or have the opportunity for economic development in this area. And they were foiled from, you know, being able to do this. Bundy — we know that street name, don’t we? And Culver — we know that city name. They were some of the people at that point in time that were involved in halting this development by riling up the white community to create this Neighborhood Protection League, which then went to City Council with 500 people to tell the City Council that they didn’t want a zoning variance that this Black investment group was seeking to allow them to build a larger facility than a house.
Cindy Olnick 16:10
But Black business leaders didn’t give up. I mean, they built resorts elsewhere, as you talk about in your book. I mean, there’s a number of them, but they didn’t last forever.
Alison Rose Jefferson 16:19
One thing that happened in terms of some of the successful Black resorts that lasted into the mid-20th century is that with desegregation, Black folks stopped going to these places because they had other options in terms of places that they could go to easily that they hadn’t been able to go to. And then the white folks weren’t supporting the Black business ventures.
Cindy Olnick 16:42
Right. Right. And whites may not have supported the Black establishments, but the Black establishments certainly supported the local businesses.
Alison Rose Jefferson 16:50
Yes, that’s the duality of that has happened in terms of African American business experiences. Black folks, primarily, up until the last part of the 20th century, their businesses were dependent on a clientele of African Americans. But as business owners, they had to get their materials or service activities in certain places from the white community. So, they were always supporting whatever white community was close b. For instance, the Bruces down in Manhattan Beach with their resort from 1912 to 1924, before their land and the small Black community of vacation homeowners’ land was taken away through eminent domain, they were supporting the white community there by owning land, and also by using public services because they pay taxes, and then by getting materials and groceries and things from the local businesses there.
Cindy Olnick 18:01
So, speaking of Bruce’s Beach, that might be the the highest profile issue at the moment among African American leisure sites, because the land was recently given back to descendants of the Bruce’s, and I just wonder what you think about that.
Alison Rose Jefferson 18:17
So, the land that the Bruce’s family descendants recently got back was from Los Angeles County. Initially, all the land that was taken between 26th and 27th Street and between the Strand and Highland was taken by Manhattan Beach in the ruse of creating a park. It was really to just chase the Black people out of Manhattan Beach in 1924. They didn’t create a park until the 1950s. So recently, they gave the land to them, and the county is now leasing it back. It has captured the imagination of the nation and the world. And as far as we know, it’s one of the first times that a government entity has given back land for a restitution of a racist act to an African American family. Now, the US government has been giving a land back to Native Americans, in California too, Northern California, they’ve done a few land givebacks. So, it’s not something that’s totally unusual, but for African Americans in this prime beach area of Manhattan Beach, it was really kind of high profile. I think that it certainly is an extraordinary move. But it’s not enough. There is still the legacy of white supremacist sabotage of African American business and community development in terms of people having the opportunities to dream over the last 100 years, starting in the 20s, of maybe that seed of an African American group that was down there, maybe some of those people would have wound up working in the oil industry, or working in the technology industry that grew up there in the World War Two years, because they were there by the beach would have also contributed to creating some other business opportunities in the South Bay that were missed. And the other legacy is that in terms of contemporary times, the Black population in Manhattan Beach is less than half a percent. So the community is 35,000 people, less than half a percent means there’s less than 500 people that live there that are Black, and most of those people, if they have home ownership or tenure, they’ve been there only since like the 70s.
Cindy Olnick 20:51
So what drew you to this topic of African American leisure sites?
Alison Rose Jefferson 20:56
In large part, my family history because my mother’s family used to go to Lake Elsinore when she was growing up. When I was a child, we went to Lake Elsinore, right when the water was rejuvenated in the early 1960s. We had this family outing my uncles were there, my cousins my grandmother. I was really little. And then later, when I was probably in junior high school, we went up to Lake Elsinore again and we visited some distant relatives up there. And so, between that time, when I was really little in junior high school, I heard stories about my family going there. And so that kind of initially planted the seed in my mind. And by the time I’m getting to graduate school, working on my Master’s in Heritage Conservation at USC, I’m looking around for paper topics to write about things that were meaningful to me. And also that I felt would be meaningful to my greater African American experience, and that community. And I also got a big boost in terms of encouragement from Kevin Starr, who was California historian who was teaching at USC at that point in time, and he wrote the California Dream series.
Cindy Olnick 22:20
But Alison, I’d love your general thoughts on how leisure and these leisure sites fit into the broader picture of the African American experience and the Southern California experience in the 20th century.
Alison Rose Jefferson 22:35
One of the reasons that all people came to California, including Black people was that they were coming for new life opportunities in a mild climate and in a picturesque outdoor setting. Black folks were also coming to escape the worst of the Jim Crow era, anti-Black racism, and segregation in the South. There was less violent racism in terms of physical things that happened to you. And you had more opportunities to experience life here. And one of the other things for Black folks, along with white folks, but particularly for Black folks, is they could buy property here. In the early part of the 20th century, Los Angeles had the largest number of home owners of many metropolitan areas that African Americans migrated to out of the South. So that was a significant point of why folks wanted to come here. And as it related to these leisure sights, and African Americans wanting to enjoy the outdoors just like everybody else that was an important element that shaped the long freedom rights struggle and civil rights movement just as economic and political ideals. Free time is one of the most important things that we all have in our lives, in terms of how we can rejuvenate ourselves, and how we can control our lifestyles. It was important for African Americans, like all other Americans, to be able to have time to themselves to just veg out look at the beautiful ocean like we’re doing today, well we’re working but still, we’re sitting here on this beautiful sunny day under shade of palm trees. And we’re looking out at the ocean in front of us. Black folks wanted to do that just like white folks wanted to do that.
Cindy Olnick 24:50
Yeah, but even then, African Americans faced pervasive racism. Here’s Verna Williams again.
Verna Williams 24:55
One day I was playing, we will plan beach ball, one those big beach balls that you play with at the beach. And my ball went over that fence. And I ran over there to get my ball. A little white lady came running up to me, saying You got no business over here. And I just looked at her; didn’t say anything. I just took my ball and ran on back over there in my spot where I belonged. And laughed at myself, you know. I says, Poor thing, she didn’t know any better. But we had lots of fun there. But now let’s say you can go anyplace you want to go.
Cindy Olnick 25:45
So how can stories like this, how can this history help to fight racism?
Alison Rose Jefferson 25:50
It’s important that we not have just lip service, because at the same time that the county is giving this land back to this individual family, there’s a bunch of other things that are going on, that are messed up in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion. I as a historian can see it from the standpoint of who got to say what the narrative was in terms of the story in Manhattan Beach, you know, because people aren’t really that versed in the history. And because it was politicians that were involved in making this happen, they have a political agenda. Yes, they are empathetic to dismantling white supremacy and racism, but they got an agenda that has to do with their political machine. And we have to remember that, and then, you know, other people have other political and economic agendas around this. I mean, Manhattan Beach, the city officials have said nothing since the county turned the land back over to the Bruces. And in terms of the Bruce family, who knows what they’re going to do, because they don’t live here in terms of the people that were the inheritors of the restitution. At least in terms of the place memory, there is more of a recognition around Los Angeles area and the universe that Black history matters. Okay, Black history matters. When you go to the park there in Manhattan Beach now, you see more Black folks hanging out and having their parties there. There’s a program that has been developed; it started by another woman named Allison, Allison Hales Culture Club Southbay, where she’s gathering young folks, elementary school and teens who don’t have access to the beach all the time to come out to the beach and have experiences in learning how to surf and beach volleyball and mixing with a multi ethnic community and culinary experiences of different cultures and art experiences. And I’m doing some history lessons with that group. So that is taking the legacy of the Bruces and making it more known to people. And we have been doing some of those kinds of programs before in Santa Monica, with Nick Gabaldon Day, which we’ve been doing in Santa Monica since 2012. And we bring kids out to the beach from inland mostly kids from the Black community and other communities of color to get a surfing experience. Get a history lesson and ocean stewardship and watershed management is part of all of these programs that I just mentioned. So, it’s a multilayered approach to letting kids and adults who are supervising them learn that our cultural, natural political environments are all intertwined together because they may have not thought that the beach was for them. In Santa Monica, we’ve even gone further in terms of the way in which we have gotten that history out there with the Belmar History + Art program which is at the historic Belmar Park sports field. And there’s a history installation of 15 different panels that talk about the African American experience in Santa Monica because a lot of people don’t even know that there is a historic African American community that’s still in Santa Monica. And there’s some families in Santa Monica, who have been here since the turn of the 20th century.
Cindy Olnick 29:43
Yeah, yeah. And that Belmar project speaking of layering and, you know, interdisciplinary approaches, you worked on that with an artist, right?
Alison Rose Jefferson 29:51
April Banks created this lovely, wonderful multi-dimensional public sculpture that has many symbols of what the African American experience was in Santa Monica, which in addition to the outdoor installation, there’s an online essay that I wrote, which builds on all of the research that is in my book, and there were community engagement programs that were done. There’s also lesson plans that we did with the UCLA teacher enrichment program, and in the middle school program, and one of the lessons in the lesson plan also includes the story of Bruce’s Beach because the teacher Shawana Moore wanted to show the comparison between what had happened in Manhattan Beach and what was going on in Santa Monica.
Cindy Olnick 30:42
Well, I can’t let you go without hearing about what you’ve been doing with the Getty Conservation Institute.
Alison Rose Jefferson 30:48
Yes. Well, the work that I began in my fellowship is to expand on the research that has been done about the historic African American community that was in Venice. I’m just surprised in terms of what resources I’ve been able to find to this point in terms of the Venice community and how we might be able to share that story in a broader way, and…
Cindy Olnick 31:13
I’m thinking Netflix series.
Alison Rose Jefferson 31:15
Well, the book has been optioned for a TV show with Brad Pitt’s company, and Viola Davis’s company with Amazon.
Cindy Olnick 31:27
Oh, my God, that’s fantastic.
Alison Rose Jefferson 31:30
Yes. And they’re particularly interested in showcasing initially, the Bruce’s beach story. And so yeah, I’m with you. Venice, Black Venice, Black Venice. We got we could get a Netflix show. All right.
Cindy Olnick 31:42
Well, I’ll see you at the premiere. Thank you so much, Alison.
Alison Rose Jefferson 31:46
Thank you so much, Cindy, for inviting me to participate in the show.
Trudi Sandmeier 31:53
Well, Cindy, that was amazing. And really fun to listen to you guys out at the beach, talking about her work in the place where it happened.
Cindy Olnick 32:02
Yes, yes, it was super fun. And listeners if you haven’t already run, do not walk to Alison’s book, Living the California Dream:, African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era.
Trudi Sandmeier 32:15
It’s really fun to think about these places and learn so much more about their history.
Cindy Olnick 32:21
Yes, yes. And so yeah, so we got more of season three coming at ya and we look forward to more in person interviews this season.
Trudi Sandmeier 32:28
Tune in next time for a conversation with one of our grads who talked about the issue of Feng Shui as intangible cultural heritage.
Haowen Yu 32:39
The name itself come from fundamental concepts of how wind and water represents the nature itself and how exactly wind and water change or regulates the power of nature.
Cindy Olnick 33:00
For photos from this episode, and links to more information, visit our episode page at saveas.place.
Trudi Sandmeier 33:09
This episode was produced by the amazing Willa Seidenberg with an assist from Cindy Olnick. Our original theme music is composed by Steven Conley. Save As is a production of the Heritage Conservation Program in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
