Alvin Taylor and his sister, Pearl, were kids when the City of Palm Springs, California began burning down their neighbours' homes. But they still remember the smell of the smoke.
"We would come home, and a neighbour's house would be gone - just burned rubble," Pearl Taylor Devers said.
In 1965, the City of Palm Springs began razing the Taylors' predominantly black neighbourhood to make way for commercial development near the city centre. Their father, a carpenter, had built their modest home from the foundation up. Their mother, a house cleaner, had worked for celebrities like Lucille Ball and the family of Amelia Earhart, and took the children to church every Sunday.
The Taylors grew up in an area of Palm Springs known as Section 14; racial segregation made the neighbourhood one of the few places where black people could purchase a home.
But that was before the fires. Every week a new home would go up in flames - sometimes with a neighbour's belongings inside. The Taylor family moved from home to home in Section 14, trying to outrun the flames. Each time their house was destroyed.
After a lengthy investigation, a 1968 report from the California Department of Justice deemed the destruction of Section 14 a "city-engineered holocaust".
Onlookers watch a "controlled burn" of a home in Section 14 of Palm Springs.
Nearly six decades later, survivors of Section 14 could finally see restitution after the California Department of Justice Reparations Task Force issued a sweeping set of reparations proposals last week.
The thousand-page report sets out 115 legislative recommendations to address inequalities among black Californians and ensure that injustices - like the destruction of Section 14 - never happen again.
Among the recommendations is a controversial proposal for cash payments of at least $1.2m (£943,400) to each black descendant of slaves.
Members of the task force said they hope their report helps the public understand the true cost of racism in California, regardless of whether the government ends up deciding to give direct cash payments or not.
The issue is highly divisive in the state. A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 54% of likely California voters had an unfavourable view of the task force, while nearly the same amount, 59%, believe the state should offer a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.
The atmosphere was charged on Thursday, when the report was presented to the public, with some saying payments could not come soon enough.
"It's my money, and I want it now," one woman yelled.
Others said it was unfair to ask this generation to pay for the sins of the past through reparations that will ultimately be funded by tax dollars.
California Republican Assembly member Bill Essayli, who is Lebanese-American, said he opposes the recommendations of the task force.
"This whole thing of focusing on people's race and victimhood, [it] is nothing but an attempt to divide Americans and pit them against each other," he told the BBC.
Nothing untouched by racism
This debate is nothing new. Americans have argued over the idea of reparations since the end of the Civil War.
In recent years since, members of Congress have tried - and failed - to establish a commission to study proposals for reparations for African Americans.
While reparations efforts might have stalled on the federal level, local discussions have intensified, especially in the years since the murder of George Floyd. Evanston, Illinois became the first city in the US to give financial compensation for racist housing discrimination. But California's plan, if implemented, would be the most sweeping to date.
Dr Cheryl Grills, a clinical psychologist who specialises in racial trauma and was appointed to the task force, said it is necessary to acknowledge how the past continues to impact people today.
"Enslavement may have ended, but the ideology and the mechanisms to try to keep black people at the bottom are very much still with us," Dr Grills said.
Nothing is left of the Taylors' home but rubble. It was destroyed more than 60 years ago, but the lot remains empty.
It's a lesson the Taylors say they learned first-hand. They say the destruction of their home in Section 14 formed a core memory that would shape the rest of their lives.
Their father, a proud man, refused to abandon the home he built for his family. He tried in vain to secure a loan to buy the land, but at a time when most banks refused to give black Americans mortgages, he was left with few options.
(continue reading)
58 notes
·
View notes