On a national level, we just celebrated the 60th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March. to Washington. In California, no attention was paid to one’s 60th birthday

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historic civil rights prevail in this state.

That is understandable. Few people are likely to know much about the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which sparked arguably the biggest and bitterest brawl ever seen at the California State Capitol.

Looking back, it’s almost unbelievable what the fight was about. The discussion centered on whether it should be legally permissible, let alone morally right, for homeowners and landlords to continue to discriminate on the basis of skin color when selling and renting homes.

Spurred on by the Democratic government. Pat Brown, the Democratic-controlled legislature, voted to ban racial discrimination in housing after much fear. The public reaction was swift. Californians voted nearly 2 to 1 the following year to legalize discrimination again. But the state and US Supreme Courts ultimately ruled that the voters’ action was unconstitutional.

The vote in California was as anti-equality by legislative edict and local ordinances as you can imagine, says former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a legendary black politician, who recalls the mid-1960s.

The Rumford Act was deemed a no-no.

The moods across America were bad in 1963.

Birmingham, Alabama, police chief Bull Connor aimed dogs and fire hoses at civil rights protesters. Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the door of the school building and vowed to block integration. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot dead in Mississippi. Racists bombed a church in Birmingham, killing four little girls.

In Sacramento, Governor Brown has boldly proposed legislation to end racial discrimination in housing. No one should be denied the right to own a home because of the color of their skin, the governor declared.

Those were fighting words in the mid-1960s.

Unlike the Jim Crow

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Abroad, California had no officially segregated schools or separate drinking fountains for white and black people. But de facto housing segregation was common. People of color were excluded from many white neighborhoods by local treaties.

California’s demographics were very different

then, then today.

More than 80% of the population was white. About 9% were Latino, 5.6% Black, and about 2% Asian. Today, the black population is about the same, but whites are only 35%. Latinos make up the largest ethnic group at 39%, while Asians and Pacific Islanders make up 16%.

The housing bill was passed by and unofficially named for Assemblyman Byron Rumford (D-Berkeley), the first black legislator elected from Northern California. Then there were only three black legislators out of 120. Today there are twelve.

In a scene that couldn’t happen today due to tighter security, and hasn’t happened since dozens of civil rights protesters occupied the Capitol’s second-floor rotunda between the two legislative chambers for weeks. They slept on the tile floor at night and sang We Shall Overcome during the day, ticking off many legislators but also putting pressure on them.

Actors Marlon Brando and Paul Newman stopped by one day to support the protesters and publicize their cause. The governor came by once to thank the demonstrators and brought two grandchildren.

Senate Majority Leader Hugh Burns, a conservative Democrat from Fresno, tried to prevent a vote on the bill as the legislature approached a mandatory adjournment on the last night of its annual session. But Assembly Speaker Jesse Big Daddy Unruh of Inglewood, a civil rights advocate, threatened to quash any Senate bills pending at his home unless Burns released Rumford’s measure.

A compromise version narrowly passed the Senate, literally at eleven, then flew through the Assembly seven minutes before midnight adjournment.

But first, Unruh, a Texan sharecropper son who understood white racism, stood on the floor of the Assembly and warned colleagues of the political dangers of getting too far ahead of the citizenry.

He was immediately right. The California Real Estate Assn. launched a repeal effort, Proposition 14, which became one of the most emotional and vicious initiative campaigns in state history. The outcome was never in doubt.

The Los Angeles Times supported the retraction, stating that housing discrimination was essentially a fundamental property right.

Brown called Proposition 14 sponsors of shock troops of bigotry. But his strong advocacy of the Rumford Act contributed significantly to the defeat in the 1966 governor’s re-election. Newcomer Ronald Reagan defeated him in a landslide.

Rumford also lost a race in the Senate.

Reagan wooed voters by promising to wipe the Rumford Act from the books. But once in the office, he really never tried. Give him credit for that.

Unruh appointed a white moderate Republican, San Rafael Councilman Bill Bagley, to head a committee set up to reach a compromise. But Bagley, one of the few Republicans to vote for the bill, never convened the committee and waited for the courts to declare Proposition 14 unconstitutional.

The Rumford Act eventually evolved into the current Fair Employment and Housing Act, which some black legislators argue is not adequately enforced, particularly laws against workplace and rent discrimination.

The state agency is truly understaffed and overstretched, claims Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles). Much of it has been stripped.

She is pushing for a bill to allow local government enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in the workplace. But Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar measure for Los Angeles County three years ago, saying it could create confusion, inconsistent enforcement and increase costs.

California claims to be at the forefront of progressive values ​​and social justice, yet we haven’t invested in our civil rights infrastructure, says Smallwood-Cuevas.

We still have a long way to go when it comes to racial justice in the labor market and housing.

Yes. But the bitter battle over the Rumford Act reminds us how far we’ve come in sixty years.