By Matthew Fleischer, Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2020
In the summer of 1948, more than 60 residents of the all-white community of Eagle Rock descended upon a home that was poised to sell to a Black family, breaking the neighborhood’s color barrier. The group contained some of the area’s most esteemed businessmen and homeowners, as well as a uniformed police officer. But this was no welcoming party. Upon arrival, the mob set a 12-foot cross aflame and watched it burn.
The timing of the cross burning was not coincidental. It happened shortly after the Supreme Court’s Shelley vs. Kraemer decision made racial covenants — which barred Black, Latino and other people of color from living in certain homes by deed — unenforceable by law. A key legal protection for state-sanctioned segregation had fallen.
Eagle Rock’s message to Black people looking to integrate exclusively white neighborhoods in the wake of the decision was clear: You are not wanted, and the law will not protect you.
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