Settlement patterns of Negroes and Mexican Americans in San Diego

Leroy E. Harris, Doctoral Disseration, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1974

Harris studied the housing patterns of African- and Mexican-Americans in San Diego, paying particular attention to the years 1950 to 1970.

Although San Diego has one of the best natural harbors on the West Coast, and although its location links it to Mexico, until World War II the city had far fewer African- and Mexican-Americans than Los Angeles. Steep mountains to the east isolated it, and the early railroads went to Los Angeles, not San Diego. Industry followed the roads and railroads, as did jobs.

Many of the early residents of San Diego, who preferred “geraniums” to “smokestacks,” tried to keep San Diego a place for tourists and retired families. They discouraged industry.

Mayor Edwin Capps, in a report to the Common Council in 1901, urged the “geranium” platform: “...with proper development of attractive resorts...this city would become the winter residence of no less than five or six thousand of these most desirable citizens, each of them spending from $200 to $1000 for the season.”

“With the exception of Long Beach,” Harris wrote, “every major city on the West Coast attracted more manufacturing industries than did San Diego between 1900 and 1940...” And “in 1940, one out of every four workers...was employed by some government agency.”

The rise of the aircraft industry became a magnet for workers. But many companies had “selective” hiring practices. In 1940, the president of Vultee Aircraft announced, “It is not the policy of this company to employ people other than of the Caucasian race.” The Bracero Programs — of 1942-47 and 1951-64 — invited Mexican laborers to work on farms and build railroads, having temporary residence in the U.S. But even with this influx, “by 1970, San Diego contained the lowest proportion of Mexican-Americans of any major city in California except Oakland.”

To follow the housing patterns of blacks in San Diego, Harris looked at census figures and at the movement of African-American churches. In the late 1920s, most had shifted to the Southeast portions of the city. As had “Negro housing,” which “shifted from the downtown and waterfront areas to ‘Southeast San Diego.’ ” It became “confined to the area lying south of Market Street and west of Wabash Boulevard. As the community spread east, Helix Freeway [now Highway 94] became the northern ‘boundary.’ ”

The Mexican-American population became more dispersed. People with Spanish surnames were found in almost every census tract, though the largest concentrations came in the “Southeast” section. By 1970, Harris concluded, “San Diego is less segregated than Eastern cities but more segregated than other California cities.”

In his analysis of how this came about, Harris didn’t favor a single factor.

The automobile, the streetcar, and the motorbus enabled whites to move farther from downtown. They left older houses, in Logan Heights and Golden Hill, for new developments north and east of Balboa Park. Housing became available for blacks in the southeast section of the city.

“White flight” was a cause. “The growing concentration of Negroes in one area...appears to be as much related to the movement of whites out of a neighborhood as to the movement of Negroes into the area.” Whites refused to move into “changing” areas, at the edges of existing “all-Negro neighborhoods.” Some historians said housing cost was a factor. Harris disagreed. “...There are at least as many tracts outside the southeast section which contain equally as inexpensive housing units. If housing cost were the only factor...Negroes’ residence would be dispersed over twice as many tracts.”

Harris cited two other factors that led to segregation: restrictive clauses in real estate deeds and “gate-keeping” covenants among real estate agents.

Harris studied 29 real estate developments. Twenty deeds contained “racial restrictive clauses.” One for City Heights reads, “This property shall not be sold, leased, rented or occupied by any person other than one of the Caucasian race.” All 20 deeds were written between 1910 and 1950.

Real estate brokers, apartment-house owners and managers, builders, developers, and mortgage bankers, Harris argued, functioned as “gate-keepers,” preventing African- and Mexican-Americans from buying or renting in a specific area.

In 1964, the late M. Larry Lawrence headed Realtors for Fair Housing. He told a California Advisory Committee hearing, held in San Diego, that “it is both difficult, and in some cases impossible, for Negroes to buy or rent in certain areas of San Diego. Realtors have an unwritten understanding not to sell to Negroes in certain areas.”

When the Rumford Fair Housing Act became law in 1962, the San Diego Realty Board led a statewide campaign to nullify it. And between 1962 and 1972, “the Fair Employment Practices Commission office in San Diego processed] 170 formal complaint cases arising from the Rumford Act.”

Harris concluded: “Census tract data for 1960 and 1970 indicate that the trend toward segregation of the minority group community from the rest of the city somewhat decreased during the 1960s, although little positive movement toward integration took place.”