Black Long Beach – Then And Now

by Michael Lozano

continued from the cover page

Rents are rising across the city, while good paying jobs are hard to come by. Day and others say those two factors are helping to contribute to the Black flight out of Long Beach.

Back in 1910 the Census counted just 100 Black Long Beach residents. By 2000 Blacks accounted for nearly 15 percent of the city’s population of roughly half a million. Ten years later the number was down to 13 percent.

And while Long Beach still has the second largest Black population in Los Angeles County, their numbers are quickly being replaced, with Latinos now the largest group in the city, followed by whites and Asians.

Adrian McCard moved to Long Beach from Nevada in June and is already thinking of leaving. Like others in the African American community she cites a lack of jobs and the city’s persistently high crime rate as reasons.

“Our kids are not safe at school due to gangs,” says McCard, a mother of six, who plans on relocating again in two years time. She adds she has yet to find work while her monthly rent is being raised to $950 from its current $875.

One step forward…

The first substantial wave of African Americans to settle in Long Beach arrived between 1910 and 1930. Many ended up working as domestic help for wealthy white families, according to Long Beach resident and social researcher Alex Norman.

Census records from those years indicate most Black workers were employed as maids, cooks and day laborers.

Arriving mainly from southern states and often fleeing oppressive conditions there, many would find their new environs to be far from welcoming.

Discriminatory housing policies meant a majority of African Americans living in Long Beach at the time wound up being crammed into a 1500 ft. by 500 ft. area adjacent to Polytechnic High School.

Racial attitudes, meanwhile, were on full display when, for example, discussions were held over the opening of a “colored Coney Island,” and again in 1919, when local black folks protested the “Drown the Ni**er” game at the Pike amuse- ment park.

By the 1940s, the Black population had increased to over 4,000. Many of the newcomers were drawn to jobs at the growing Port of Long Beach, building ships and working in defense.

In 1940, as WWII gained in intensity, the U.S. Navy built a naval station on Terminal Island, making the local shipyards among the largest in the country. Nearby San Pedro shipyards employed more than 90,000 people during the war years.

The boom in employment led directly to the emergence of a sizable Black middle class in Long Beach so that by 1960 the city’s Black population reached nearly 10,000.

“We actually had a thriving neighborhood,” remembers Long Beach native Charles Brown, who has lived here since his birth in 1948. “Families knew each other. People went to the same churches… There was cohesiveness…”

But racism continued to plague the community. A sampling of Press Telegram headlines from the era read: “Fire bomb Negro family home. Two children narrowly escape” from 1956; “Vandals damage home of Negroes” from 1958; and “Anti-Negro sign posted at home site” in 1961.

In response came individuals like Ernest McBride Sr., a founding member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1961 Charles Haynes became the first Black member of the Board of Realtors, and in 1970 James Wilson became the city’s first Black councilmember. Charles Ussery was named the first Black police chief in 1979.

The more things change…

Over the years African Americans have made significant strides in gaining greater political representation, including the city’s first Black municipal court judge and it’s first Black school superintendent. Today African Americans hold three out of nine seats in the City Council.

But for many, while much has changed there is also much that remains the same.

“I wish I can say there’s a significant difference,” says Brown, looking out across the city he’s known since birth, “but there really isn’t.”

Black-owned businesses are few, while Black students continue to lag their peers in academic achievement. Poverty and violence are still all too real for too many.

“There definitely still is discrimination,” says Evelyn Knight, who came to Long Beach in 1962, after having marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery. “In education … Black people are still not getting equal access and resources.”

About 27 percent of Blacks in Long Beach live below the poverty line, compared to 18 percent of the city’s white population, according to the 2009-2013 American Community Survey. A majority of African Americans also continue to live in and around North and Central Long Beach, where crime and poverty remain persistently high.

Brown, however, does not plan on leaving. “I still love Long Beach,” says the lifelong activist, who remains committed to lifting up those in his community who choose to remain. “I see the potential for great things happening.”